To Walk A Mile
by rmt
Summary: There is an accident, involving a cure for Jusenkyou curses, Ryouga, Ranma and Pantyhose Tarou. Can enemies put aside their differences and set things right?
1. Chapter 1: Of Curses And Men

Disclaimer: I don't own and didn't create Ranma ½ or any of these characters.

Timeframe: This is set several months after the end of the manga, but I only mention some events in passing and will try to keep spoilers to a minimum.

Revisions: Yes, I do go back and edit previous chapters a fair bit, so if you're rereading a chapter and it seems a bit different, that will be why. I will change wordings, expand or delete sections, change the slant of a scene, fix characterisations, but I won't change anything to the point that it is required to read the latest version of a chapter to understand a new one. All major plot points will remain intact.

* * *

**Chapter One: Of Curses and Men**

A lone figure trudged wearily through the streets, a huge backpack strapped to his shoulders and a large glass bottle cradled protectively in his arms. He had been wandering for several days, but finally, against all odds, he had made it to Nerima. All he had to do now was find his way to the Tendou Dojo which, for Ryouga Hibiki, was much easier said than done.

The boy stopped and looked around, trying to find some landmark that was familiar. If only all the streets didn't look the same, he thought to himself. It was as if someone kept moving the dojo, or the streets, or Tokyo itself; some grand practical joke the universe was playing on the lost boy.

Ryouga adjusted the backpack, attempting to give his aching shoulders some relief. He double-checked the stopper on the bottle for what seemed like the thousandth time since he found it. The liquid inside was far too precious to risk losing even a single drop; it would be the end to all of his suffering.

Ryouga had just started to walk again when he noticed a young woman coming towards him. She was a couple of years older than him, with long dark hair tied in a ponytail which hung over one shoulder and an expression of perfect calm on her face.

"Good afternoon, Ryouga," the woman said. "Back from your trip already?"

"Hello Kasumi. Yes, I just arrived back."

"That's very nice to hear." Kasumi gave a beatific smile. "Do you need me to take you to the dojo? Ranma and Akane have just arrived home from school."

"Thank you," Ryouga said, bowing politely. "That is, if it's not any trouble."

"Don't be silly!" she said gently, laughing. "It's no trouble at all. It isn't far."

As it turned out, the entrance to the dojo had been just around the corner all along. Kasumi escorted Ryouga to the gate, and then left, explaining that she had errands to run before dinner. He walked up to the front door and knocked.

The door was opened by a black-haired boy of Ryouga's age and height.

"Hey Ryouga, man!" the boy said, his handsome face breaking into a grin. "Long time, no see! Come on in."

"Hello Ranma." Ryouga stepped into the entryway, kicked of his shoes, and then shrugged the backpack off his shoulders and placed it onto the ground. Beside it, he carefully placed the bottle. Ranma gave it a curious look.

The two boys sat together in the living room, chatting. Not that Ryouga would have admitted it, but Ranma was the closest thing he had to a friend. They had started out as bitter enemies, fighting over bread, curses, martial arts superiority and the love of a girl, but the past year had mellowed their relationship into something closer to friendly rivals.

"…and Kunou's been reciting love sonnets in honour of 'the beauteous pigtailed girl' in front of the school _every_ morning – that wore thin fast! – and that nut-job principal came up with yet another stupid haircut policy … and then there was that Martial Arts Synchronised Swimming contest … I won, of course… and then Kodachi made up a batch of cookies for me with something called… starts with v… she said it was for guys ... well, anyway, luckily the rest of the guys at school got them… knowing Kodachi they were probably poison or somethin'… but that's about it. Just the usual stuff, really. How 'bout you?"

"Just the usual," Ryouga replied, "…wandering… training. I've been trying to get back to Akari's farm for two weeks."

Akari wasn't Akane, but she was kind and sweet and, to his eternal surprise, actually liked his pig curse. And most importantly of all, she wasn't Ranma's fiancée. He had given up on Akane after she'd nearly given her life to save Ranma all those months ago in China. It was then he'd known for certain where her heart lay; there was no way she'd have done the same for him.

Ryouga caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. A slightly older, somewhat effeminate boy with short dark hair, wearing a scaled vest and pantyhose sash, had hopped up onto the wall on the far side of the koi pond, apparently searching for something. He paused briefly, idly fingering one of the longer tendrils of hair that hung from in front of each of his ears. Apparently, he couldn't see what he was looking for; a scowl darkened his delicate features and he hopped off the wall out of sight again.

"What's _he_ doing here?" he hissed to Ranma quietly.

"Oh yeah, and Pantyhose Tarou's been in Nerima the last couple of days too," Ranma added, as if continuing from his previous story.

"Why?"

"He's after Happousai again." Ranma laughed. "Of course, the old freak keeps givin' him the slip, though. Thinks it's all great fun."

"So he's got another plan to get his name changed?"

"Yeah, prob'ly. Dunno what it is, though. I don't ask and he don't tell. And he didn't come in here and gloat about his plan like he did that other time. Jerk!" Ranma gave a dismissive snort. "At least he don't have any Jusenkyou water this time. I don't even wanna think about a world with two old freaks in! Or two of him… yuck!"

Ryouga cleared his throat, deciding it was time to broach the subject he had come to discuss. "Actually Ranma, there's a reason I'm here. I need to talk to you about something."

"Is this about that bottle?"

"Yes. It's a cure."

"A cure?!" Ranma repeated, his voice rising excitedly. "You mean Spring of Drowned Man? Where'd you get it?"

The pigtailed boy bounced to his feet and then bounded over to the entryway. Ryouga rushed after him.

"Shhh, Akane might hear." Ryouga held a finger his lips, waiting for Ranma to quiet down.

"You mean you don't wanna talk to Akane this time?" Ranma grinned.

"Shut up, Ranma!" Ryouga growled, cuffing the other boy lightly over the head. "Let's go somewhere quiet and I'll tell you everything."

Ryouga followed Ranma to the dojo, the bottle tucked firmly under one arm. Once there, he turned to Ranma and began to talk.

"About a week ago I was lost in the mountains, when I stumbled across an old shrine. The old man there told me how the site for the temple had been chosen because of the sacred spring that flowed through the caves beneath."

"Spring of Drowned Man? Here in Japan?" Ranma interrupted.

"No, it's not Spring of Drowned Man," Ryouga continued. "But the old man believed it could cure our curses. The water from that spring is supposed to be able to get rid of any illness, magic or curse. The only thing is-"

"Come back here, old man!"

The two boys turned to the door in time to see a tiny old man come bursting through the door at a surprising speed. He was being closely pursued by a growling Pantyhose Tarou.

Happousai ducked between the two boys, cackling with glee. With a flick of his pipe, he knocked the glass bottle out of Ryouga's hands, sending it flying in a high arc towards his pursuer.

Ranma and Ryouga cried out in unison, diving to catch the bottle. Ranma, slightly in front, ran full-tilt into Tarou and they crashed to the floor together. Ryouga tripped over Ranma's leg and landed in a sprawled heap on top of the other boys. He flipped himself over in time to see the bottle descending rapidly towards them.

"Get off me, fem-boy!!!" Tarou snarled from beneath him.

It was only then that Ryouga heard the fizzing sound coming from something on the floor beside them.

---

Tarou opened his eyes groggily. For some reason, he was laying face-down on the floor of the dojo. He sat up slowly, trying to clear his head. He'd been chasing Happousai… then those two idiots had tripped over him… and then he'd been hit in the face by one of the old freak's Happoudaikarins. No wonder he was still feeling dazed; those things sure did pack a punch.

He worked his way to his feet slowly, carefully avoiding the pieces of glass scattered on the floor. Pig-boy had been carrying a glass bottle, and the old freak had knocked it out of his hands; it must have smashed open. He looked down at the floor, noticing for the first time that he was standing in a large puddle of water.

Beginning to feel uneasy, he studied his outstretched hands. They were wet. So were his arms. Anxiously, he ran his hands through his hair, over his back and chest; all were wet and cold. There should have been enough water to trigger his curse. Why hadn't he changed? He bent down and wet his hands in the puddle at his feet, then smeared the water over his arms. Nothing happened. His heartbeat began to quicken.

What had been in that bottle? He tried to reconstruct the scene in his mind. Fem-boy and pig-boy had been talking intently. Pig-boy had been cradling the bottle protectively in his arms, like it was something precious. Like it was a cure.

He sniffed his hands. Whatever it was, it smelt like plain water, and tasted like plain water. Of course, that didn't mean a great deal: the springs at Jusenkyou appeared to be plain water, that is, until you splashed yourself with one.

This was not good. Unlike the other two, he liked his curse. He liked his super-strong body, the ability to terrify others, the knowledge that he could win just about any fight with a splash of cold water.

Stupid pig-boy! Splashing him with... what, exactly? His curse wasn't supposed to be able to be cured. He had proved that himself when he splashed himself with the Spring of Drowned Octopus to increase the already considerable power of his cursed form by adding tentacles. In fact, he had long suspected that any attempt to cure their curses with the Spring of Drowned Man would have resulted in pig-boy and fem-boy's cursed bodies changing to a grotesque hybrid of their current cursed forms and their real bodies. He chuckled. There were few things he wouldn't give to see their faces if _that_ happened.

The sky rumbled ominously outside. A storm was coming.

"That idiot had better know how to get this reversed!" Tarou muttered to himself, angrily. Of course, how willing the aforementioned idiot would be to talk was another matter. Not that that it would be a problem if he wasn't; Tarou had no qualms in using more persuasive methods if he needed to. Even without his powerful cursed form, he still felt confident enough to tackle the likes of pig-boy – and fem-boy too, if he interfered. He stepped outside, following the sounds of maniacal laughter he could hear coming from the street, and chuckled to himself quietly as he cracked his knuckles.

The thunder rumbled again. It began to rain.

---

An enraged bovine bellow echoed through the streets of Nerima. Akane, sitting at her desk in her bedroom, looked up from her homework and out the window to see a monstrous, winged minotaur-like creature with tentacles along its back – Tarou's cursed form – in the street outside the house. He seemed to be having problems controlling his body. His eel tail was lashing around wildly and his tentacles were thrashing around in different directions at once, as though he were dazed or confused.

'Maybe he and Ranma had a fight', she wondered, 'It looks like Ranma won'. Of course he had, she reprimanded herself. Ranma always won. Sometimes he had a few setbacks, but he always won eventually.

She certainly wasn't sorry to see the back of Pantyhose Tarou though. There was something about Tarou that made her uncomfortable; he was polite enough – to her, if nobody else – but he was arrogant and aloof, and his eyes glittered dangerously even when he smiled.

"Bwee!"

Upon hearing the plaintive noise, Akane immediately flew up out of her chair and raced down the stairs to the living room, where a small, wet, black piglet sat on the tatami floor.

"P-Chan! You're soaking wet!" she cried happily, reaching for the little pig. "Have you lost your collar?" P-Chan eyed her nervously, and backed away several steps. "What's wrong, baby? Come here", she cooed. Eventually, he allowed himself to be picked up, and was rewarded with a kiss on the snout. Clutching the little piglet tightly to her chest for warmth, she carried him back upstairs to her room. There was another couple of hours before dinner would be ready; hopefully she could finish her homework by then.

---

"Akane. Dinner's ready!" Kasumi called from downstairs.

"Be right down," Akane called, packing up her school books. She glanced down at P-Chan, to find that he had fallen asleep on her lap. She gently moved him to her bed, and went downstairs to the living room where dinner was waiting.

Her family and Genma Saotome were clustered around the table, eagerly waiting.

"Where's Ranma?" she asked, kneeling by the table.

"I haven't seen Ranma since he came home from school." answered Kasumi, daintily placing steaming bowls of rice and curry on the table. "Ryouga was looking for you two. Maybe they're off together, they're such good friends."

"Ryouga? When did he arrive?"

"Just after I left to go buy some groceries. You didn't see him?"

"No," Akane said. She paused, thinking. "I did hear some noises coming from the dojo earlier. Maybe they're just out training."

"That'll be good for the boy," Genma managed between mouthfuls. "That Ryouga's a strong fighter. Keeps Ranma on his toes."

That doesn't answer where they are now though, Akane thought. "I think I'll go check in the dojo," she added aloud.

She headed out to the dojo, barely missing her father announcing loudly to the family, "So good to see my little girl worrying about her fiancé!"

The dojo was dark and quiet, but Akane checked inside to be sure. It was entirely empty, except for a large scorch mark and a huge number of different sized shards of glass lying in a damp patch in the middle of the floor. She walked over and picked up a piece; it looked like it had come from a large bottle.

"Great, more repair bills. You'd think that they'd clean up the mess… or at least hang around to help." she muttered angrily. Still, it wasn't like Ranma to go missing around dinner time though. "Stupid Ranma. Making me worry like this."

What was that business with Tarou though? Was he responsible? She thought back to when she had seen Tarou-monster earlier. No, she hadn't seen Ranma or Ryouga with him, but he had looked injured. There weren't many people in Nerima who could hurt Pantyhose Tarou's cursed form: Ranma and Happousai came to mind, and Cologne – although she tended to keep to herself these days. She hadn't seen Happousai all day, but he had been making himself scarce since Tarou arrived.

Akane headed back into the house to slip on a pair of shoes, and then walked out onto the streets where she had seen Tarou last.

A telephone pole lay on its side, broken at about chest height. Caused by Tarou? Maybe. A little further, someone had poked a series of holes into the concrete…with their finger, apparently. Ryouga, then. She had seen Ryouga gouging out chunks of concrete with his finger before when he was happy, which admittedly wasn't often. Further along, she found a large hole in the concrete, and several scraps of yellow and black cloth on the ground. She picked one of them up and studied it closely. It was Ryouga's bandana. It had been shredded.

Heart beginning to race with fear, Akane picked up the bandana and ran further up the street. Nothing. Ryouga had apparently only gotten so far before something had attacked him. That would have been Tarou. But what had happened after that, and where was Ranma?

"Ranma!" she shouted. She cupped her hands around her mouth for extra volume. "Ranma! Ryouga!"

She ran back to the house, in time to see Kasumi invite in a cloaked and hooded figure that had been waiting at the front door. As Akane neared, she noticed the pantyhose sash around his neck.

"You!" she hissed. "What have you done to Ranma?"

"Akane! Be nice to our guests," Kasumi chided gently.

Tarou pushed back the hood from his face and turned to face Akane, one of those thin lipped, insincere smiles on his face. "Your sister has _very_ kindly offered to let me wait here until he returns," he said in his languid tenor voice. "I am looking for him as well."

Akane returned his gaze coolly. The Chinese boy appeared to have chosen his words carefully; he was at least trying to be polite. She did her best for force a smile in return, for Kasumi's sake, and then waited until he and her sister had gone before picking up the phone.

"Dr Tofu? Its Akane … I was wondering whether you had seen Ranma or Ryouga this afternoon … No? … It's just that I think they were in a fight and I thought … No? … Yes, I'm sure you're right … Yes, I'm sure everything will be fine. Thank you. Goodbye."

No luck there either. Damn Ranma! He shouldn't just run off like this without telling anybody. Akane sighed. "I hope he's okay."

---

Tarou was seated in the Tendou's living room, still wrapped in his cloak. He had expected the youngest daughter to follow him in and starting demanding explanations, but she had stomped off upstairs. A good thing, he decided, since it was far more convenient to wait for that crossdresser and his porcine friend here, and the family might be less hospitable if they thought he was responsible for their absence.

Not that they were particularly hospitable to begin with. With the exception of the eldest daughter who was busily clearing the table like the good little housewife that she was, he had been received with a mixture of suspicion and dislike barely concealed beneath a veneer of forced politeness. Even that older dark-haired woman who he'd never seen before, the one who he'd considered almost attractive – until he'd noticed the striking resemblance to fem-boy's cursed form, that is.

It didn't matter, really. The social niceties had never meant a great deal to him, and forced politeness was good; it meant that they were afraid of him… afraid of his cursed form, no doubt. Yet another reason why he couldn't let anyone else know what had happened.

He almost missed the small black shape walking around the outside hallway in the direction of the bathroom: pig-boy had finally shown up. Tarou waited until the little pig was out of sight, and then stood up to follow. With any luck, he could corner the little idiot in the bathroom and then find out what he needed to know.

As he approached the bathroom, he could hear the sound of the bathtub being filled within.

"P-Chan! Where are you?" Akane was walking down the hallway, searching for... the piglet?

"P-Chan?" he enquired, his eyebrow raised.

"My pet pig. I thought he would be down here." She turned to him with a suspicious glare. "Where is Ranma? And what did you do to Ryouga?"

Interesting. Apparently she didn't realise that pig-boy's cursed form and this P-Chan were one and the same. "As I said before," he answered, "I have no idea where he is. I am waiting for him myself. As for your little friend… I just know he'll be around somewhere." He fought the urge to chuckle; he was just too clever sometimes!

She opened her hand, showing him a tattered scrap of yellow and black cloth. "I found this on the street. It's Ryouga's." she said, her voice now hardening angrily. "I saw you flying away from the spot where I found it. Don't try and tell me you weren't involved."

He snorted contemptuously. The little brat was starting to get annoying. "Listen, you know how strong I am in my cursed body. If I had fought those two, do you think they could have gotten very far afterwards?" He heard the slightly dangerous edge his voice had acquired and took a moment to calm himself. This girl was intriguingly unafraid of him, despite everything that he'd done to her. "I saw the damage in the street, same as you," he said, as reassuringly as he was able. "I'm sure they will be back soon."

She obviously didn't believe him, but turned abruptly and left in a huff, stomping loudly down the corridor. He waited until she had gone, then silently opened the door to the outer bathroom and entered.

Tarou waited until the splash that indicated that the occupant had jumped into the bath. He slid open the door to see a human figure emerge spluttering from the water. It was Ranma Saotome.

"Fem-boy?"

Ranma spun around and stared up at him, his blue eyes wide with shock.

"What the hell is going on?" Ranma yelled. He leapt out of the tub. "How did I end up as P-Chan?!"

Tarou simply sniggered in reply. Ranma scowled. Ignoring him, Tarou answered breezily, "You should ask your idiot friend. That's what I was trying to do."

"And you thought I was him." Ranma's eyes narrowed quizzically. "Hang on. How did you know somethin' was wrong?"

Tarou paused, thinking quickly. "Your fiancé told me that she saw me – my cursed form, that is – outside earlier today."

"Yeah, so?"

"I saw the same thing. It wasn't me."

"Oh gods," Ranma groaned, "you haven't been playin' with that twins water again, have you?"

"Now there's a thought," Tarou smirked. "With two of me I could take over the world!"

"Yes, how did those magnetic back pads go?" Ranma quipped, grinning broadly. "That was funny! I wish I'd seen your face when you found out!"

Tarou felt his face grow warm. "Shut up, fem-boy!"

"Don't call me that, Pantyhose Tarou!" Ranma lunged forward and seized Tarou's cloak in his fists. He froze, looking his adversary up and down curiously. "Since when did you wear this cloak indoors?"

Tarou scowled, suppressing the urge to fidget under the unwanted attention.

With a sudden look of realisation, Ranma smiled. "And didn't you used to be _taller_ than me?"

Tarou hesitated. Fem-boy would find out sooner or later, given his own problem. With a growl, he tossed his cloak aside, revealing his own female body.

Ranma struggled to suppress a chuckle and failed. All those times the arrogant creep had called him crossdresser and fem-boy, all of those insults and slights against his manliness, and now _he _had the girl curse! He burst out laughing. Tarou glared down at him with his fists clenched tightly, shaking with rage and his cheeks flushed crimson. Ranma staggered backwards, his hands clasped to his aching sides, fresh howls of laughter escaping from his lips every time he caught sight of the indignant expression on the other boy's face. It took several minutes before he managed to calm himself down to the stage where he could look at Tarou without collapsing into giggles again.

Examining the fuming Pantyhose Tarou more closely, Ranma could see that the Chinese boy had a less dramatic transition to girl-hood than his own. Unlike Ranma's own tiny, buxom female form, girl-type Tarou had a lean, shapely figure which stood as nearly as tall as his male body. His voice was perhaps slightly higher pitched than normal but not enough to have been noticeable. The most striking lack of change was in his face; other than a slight softening around his jaw line and chin, it was identical, and yet it still looked like a perfectly feminine face. Not that Tarou had been particularly masculine to begin with, he reflected.

"It's not that bad," Ranma offered cheekily. "You can hardly tell the difference. In fact, you make a pretty good girl… almost as cute as me!" He dodged the punch that had been swung at his head, sniggering loudly. "The freak might even lend you some of his collection if you ask nicely!"

With an inarticulate snarl, Tarou launched himself at Ranma, knocking him backwards into the tub. He tripped on Ranma's flailing feet; his momentum causing him to plummet forward on top of the other boy.

All sound was muffled as Ranma was shoved underwater, pressed to the bottom of the tub by the Chinese boy's weight. The weight lifted from him, but a hand pushed down on his chest, prevented him from rising. Angrily, he swiped at the hand but it did not move. He heard a muffled voice; Tarou was leaning over him, speaking roughly. The pressure was then lifted from his chest, and he sat up, coughing up the water he had swallowed.

"What'd you do that for, you jerk?!" he yelled, roughly shoving Tarou away from him and thumping him over the head with a clenched fist.

Tarou folded his arms and levelled a glare at Ranma, so vicious that the pigtailed boy was momentarily surprised that the tiles behind him didn't start to smoulder.

"What happened?" he growled. "What was in that bottle?"

Ranma blinked, trying to reorient his brain back to the original conversation. "I dunno. Ryouga said it was a cure. It must have broken open when the freak's Happoudaikarin exploded."

"I figured _that_ much out for myself," Tarou said, somehow managing to look both pleased with himself and irritated at the same time. "He didn't say anything else?"

"No. He was about to when you and the freak came in." Ranma leaned back against the bathtub, thinking. "So, I got Ryouga's curse, you got mine and-"

"-your moron friend has mine, yes," Tarou cut in gruffly.

"But how? It must have been that water!"

"Obviously."

"We need to find Ryouga! It was his water."

"Didn't I already say that, _pig_-boy?"

Ranma slammed his fist into the water, angrily. "Hey! I got a name! Ranma Saotome, remember? Unless you want me to call _you_ fem-boy or something?" The scowl he received in response indicated that the other boy was unimpressed. Grinning spitefully, he added "If the pantyhose fit..."

Another fist, this one too fast to dodge, impacted with the side of his head. Rubbing the sore spot, he said more calmly, "We ain't gonna get anywhere if we can't stop fighting. My name's Ranma not… fem-boy or pig-boy or crossdresser or any of those other things."

Ranma heard a grunt in response. He doubted that it indicated agreement but at least it hadn't been another fist.

He climbed out of the bathtub and wrapped a towel around his waist, considering his options. The water hadn't been a cure… or was it? Maybe it just had to be used a special way. Maybe that's what Ryouga had been about to tell him.

"I should pop outside, see if I can find him," Ranma murmured, more to himself than the other boy.

Tarou chuckled. "That could take a while. He was flying away when I saw him."

Ranma felt the blood drain from his face. He hadn't spent much time in pig form, but he had no intention of staying that way. He knew from past experience how big a weakness in battle it could be; he had to get rid of it. And now the person with the worst sense of direction on the planet, the only one who knew how to get him back to normal, had gone missing. Obviously, the first step was to find him, but then what? If the water _was_ a cure, then the two of them could use it. As for Tarou, at least without his beast form he wouldn't be busting down the house every time he got angry. Definitely a win-win situation.

But what if it _wasn't_ a cure? What if the water had worked the way it was supposed to? Could it be reversed? Tarou had the girl curse; did that mean he'd need to be there, too? Briefly, he wondered whether he could leave Tarou in Nerima while he found and brought back Ryouga on his own, but rejected the idea quickly. The Chinese boy was about as trustworthy as the old freak; no doubt he'd come up with some scheme of his own that'd leave Ranma trapped with the piglet curse.

No, it'd be much safer to have Tarou with him, and if he had to not insult the jerk as much as he would have liked to make it work, then that's what he'd have to do.

"If Ryouga is flying, there's no point looking for him at night," he said casually. "We should leave early in the morning. If we leave it too late there's no telling where he could end up."

"We?" Tarou sneered, his customary smirk returning. "I work alone. Why would I need you to come along?"

"Hey! It ain't like I wanna spend time with you either!"

"Good. That's settled then."

Damn, Ranma cursed inwardly, that hadn't been as easy as he'd thought. He was supposed to be convincing Tarou that they needed to work together, not giving the jerk an excuse to leave him behind. He decided to try again. "What are you gonna do, then?"

"Find him, and once he tells me where he got that water and what it does, figure out a way of reversing it," Tarou explained slowly, as though he were speaking to a child.

Ranma resisted the urge to thump him... barely. "What about a cure?"

"I'm not interested in a cure. I want my body back."

"Afraid you won't win any fights without your cursed form?" Ranma grinned. He received a nasty glare in response. Apparently, he'd just hit a nerve. "Anyway, you'll need me to reverse it. You've got my curse."

"He has mine." Tarou chuckled nastily. "You never know, he might prefer turning into a girl to a pig."

Ryouga probably would, Ranma reflected, but it was not something he was about to admit to the other boy, in case he did decide to search for Ryouga on his own. "And what if it _does_ need all three of us to reverse it?" Tarou didn't have a response to that, so Ranma pressed on. "I know Ryouga. He's damn near impossible to find. And he's going to be really angry when we do find him. I was the one who knocked him into the Spring of Drowned Piglet and he's _still_ gets cut up about it. Kept picking fights with me for ages, saying things like 'Because of you I've seen hell'. Trust me, he ain't gonna be happy to see you."

"It was his own fault," Tarou interjected.

"Ryouga don't always think too clearly when he's angry. It's your curse he got – and he won't like it." Probably, Ranma added silently.

"I can handle him." Tarou raised an eyebrow nonchalantly. "He's no match for me."

"He's very strong – stronger than me – in his normal body." Ranma winced inwardly. He had never liked admitting that anyone was better than him at anything; even knowing it was true didn't make it any easier. "Add the strength from that monster body... And he's really tough. You need to hit him a bunch of times for him to even feel it. But if I'm there, I can talk to him. He'll listen to me." Okay, so listening to him wasn't exactly one of Ryouga's strong points, Ranma reflected, but Tarou didn't need to know that right now.

"What makes you think he'll listen?"

"Like I said, I know Ryouga. He'll listen. We've been through a lot together."

Tarou gave a single, stiff nod. "Fine. We'll try it your way. Just don't think I'm going to wait for you if you get left behind."

Ranma brightened. It might not have been a ringing affirmative, but Tarou had given in easier than he had expected. "You can stay upstairs with me and Pop." At least that way, the Chinese boy would be less likely to sneak off on his own. Ranma held out a towel, adding "Kasumi can find you something to wear for tonight. Your clothes are soaked, and I ain't sleeping with you naked."

He left the bathroom, trying to work out how much to tell Akane.

---

It was pitch black and his wings were aching. He had no idea where he was, but at least he wasn't over the city any more. He couldn't bear to hear the screams, to see those people running in terror. Akari – or Akane – mustn't see him like this. If either of them looked at him like those people had… his poor heart…he'd be better off dead!

No. He couldn't keep going like this. He needed to find a place to hide, to think. He flew lower, looking for a place to land, hoping he hadn't flown out over the ocean.

Trees! He was still over land!

He dropped out of the sky, landing in a small clearing near some rocks. Trembling, he curled himself up as tight as he could into a foetal position, replaying the events of the last couple of hours over and over in his mind until he eventually fell asleep.

---

Ranma awoke to the customary snores of his father on his left. He sat up, blinking the remnants of sleep from his eyes. It was still dark – just before dawn at a guess. Tarou was already awake; he was sitting in a half-lotus position on his futon with a bored expression on his face.

"Didn't sleep much, huh?" Ranma asked.

"I'm surprised anyone here gets any sleep with the noise he makes."

"Pop? Yeah, you sort of get used to it after a while," Ranma chuckled, pulling on his black pants and favourite red shirt.

Working quickly, he dug out his and his father's backpacks and stuffed in several changes of clothes. He headed downstairs, where he found the tent and camping equipment from previous training trips. As he entered the kitchen, a broad smile spread across his face: Kasumi had kindly left some food and cooking supplies packaged on the kitchen table, which he packed away carefully. Nearby, she had left two carefully wrapped rice balls.

Tarou entered the kitchen with his cloak slung over his arm, having changed back into his own clothes. Ranma offered him the remaining rice ball, having already wolfed down his own.

"Shall we go?" Ranma asked. Tarou deftly caught the backpack that had been tossed to him. After a quick check that everything was in place, the two boys headed out into the dawn.

* * *

Revision History: Spelling / grammar fixes, minor rewording, and some new paragraphs in the bathroom scene to explain Ranma's motives and feelings a little better. 


	2. Chapter 2: Pursuit

Disclaimer: I don't own and didn't create Ranma ½ or any of these characters.

**

* * *

Chapter Two: Pursuit **

Tendrils of flame from the small campfire danced into the night, accompanied by the gentle pop and crackle of burning wood.

Ranma and Tarou had set up camp for the night in a small clearing on the mountainside, near a small stream. Since it was a clear night, the two boys hadn't bothered to pitch the tent and had spread out their bedrolls under the stars.

All things considered, it hadn't been a bad day. Ranma had a hunch that Ryouga would be trying to reach the mountains, since the lost boy seemed to have spent much of his life in the mountains, either lost or in training. A quick check of the newspapers confirmed his suspicions. There had been three reports of a winged monster: one slightly north of Nerima, the other two heading west. Surprisingly, Ryouga was moving more or less in a straight line for the mountains. Ranma had been anxious about how much _more_ lost the lost boy could get with the ability to fly.

As for his travelling companion, Pantyhose Tarou had promptly rebuffed Ranma's initial attempts at conversation, but had been content to walk in silence rather than counter with his standard stream of sarcastic barbs and insults. He couldn't tell whether the Chinese boy was making an effort at being less obnoxious or was simply being more antisocial than usual, but in either case, it was probably a good thing. Their past history was proof that they were unable to hold a conversation for more than a few minutes that didn't end in one trying to clobber the other.

There was a gentle snore from the other side of the fire, indicating that the other boy had fallen asleep. Ranma laid down on his own bedroll, trying to work out the best way of tracking down Ryouga. It had to be done quickly, before the lost boy managed to leave the country – after all, he was bad enough on foot. For what would no doubt end up being a fortune, Ranma had arranged for Nabiki to report any possible Ryouga sightings and to keep the real reason for the trip a secret. He would check in periodically using a public phone.

He had tried to think of a way to explain the real reason for the trip that didn't expose Ryouga's Jusenkyou curse, but couldn't (much to Tarou's amusement). In the end, the reason he gave was that he was going on a training trip with the other two martial artists, and that they would meet Ryouga at his camping spot in the nearby vacant lot. He had been surprised at how easily the lie had been accepted, especially considering how unlikely it was that he and Tarou would willingly spend time together. He suspected Akane hadn't completely believed him, but fortunately she had been more upset about the prospect of his missing school and the fact that she hadn't been invited.

Ranma closed his eyes. At home, they would have finished dinner by now. He pictured Kasumi washing up the dishes, always so cheerful; his mother would be helping; Nabiki would be trying to work out how to fleece some poor jerk for a few thousand yen; Soun and Pop would be playing yet another game of shogi; and Akane... she'd probably be in her room getting ready for bed, maybe wondering where P-Chan had gone. He smiled, remembering the warmth that he had felt coming from her when she held him as P-Chan… feeling safe, secure… loved.

He sat up abruptly, shaking his head to clear the thoughts. She'd thump me if she knew that was me, he thought ruefully. The un-cute tomboy.

Wrapping his blanket around him, he snuggled down back onto his bedroll. Within a few minutes he was asleep.

---

The clammy night air drew in close around him, but his great bulk and thick shaggy fur kept him from feeling the cold. He curled himself tighter as he felt the knot in his stomach tighten. He hadn't eaten in thirty-six hours. He had no provisions and he had no idea what this body needed to eat. In desperation, he had tried eating grass – part of him was ox, after all – which was the cause of his current stomach ache.

He had taken to travelling on foot. His mind, attuned to the instincts of his little piglet body, couldn't block out the clamour of the multiple creatures that now made up his cursed form. It was worse in the air: the torment of an octopus out of water, of an ox high above the ground, all screaming at him from within. Briefly he wondered what type of mind could handle it; it would take a will far stronger than his – or a mind less open – to block it out.

Maybe he could find a hot spring and change himself back.

"But how long do you think you'd last out here?" a little voice piped up from within. "Alone. Lost. Naked."

Maybe not. With his luck, he'd probably end up wandering in circles out here in the wilderness until he died of starvation or hypothermia.

What had happened? Had he swapped curses with Tarou? Merged them? Was P-Chan still in here somewhere too? What about Ranma's girl curse? He ran his huge hands over what he could reach of his body, trying to find some part of him that could have come from a pig or a girl. Nothing.

He was beginning to regret leaving so suddenly. With help, perhaps he could have figured out what had happened. Ranma might even have been able to help find a cure.

"Why would he want to? You think he won't remember all those fights you had? The time you tried to kill him with the Bakusai Tenketsu?"

He had no other choice than to try and fix this on his own. In the morning, he would begin the search for the shrine where he had initially picked up the cursed water. He sighed. If only he could remember where that was, or work out where he was. Or head in the right direction if he did find out how to get there.

He wrapped his arms around himself and curled up as small as possible. He was alone.

---

Tarou awoke to the warmth of the sun on his face. He stood up, shielding his eyes from the slivers of sunlight that filtered through the trees, and looked out over the concrete sprawl of Tokyo spread out below him to the east. It was still early.

He wasn't surprised to see that ex-fem-boy was still asleep, sprawled half-way off his bedroll and his mouth gaping wide. Obviously it took something greater than mere unconsciousness to keep Ranma's mouth shut. Tarou decided to leave him asleep for as long as possible; he was a great deal easier to ignore that way.

He prodded the remains of the campfire with a stick: there were still a handful of live coals. A few twigs, and some gentle blowing on the coals, and the fire was soon revived. He then tossed on a couple of pieces of wood that were lying nearby to keep it going while he had a look around.

The stream was barely ankle-deep but it was crystal clear. He filled the kettle and hung it above the fire to heat up, and then put on some rice to cook. After checking that Ranma hadn't woken up, he pulled a bar of soap and washing bucket from his backpack, stripped off and returned to the stream.

Bracing himself against the cold, Tarou filled the bucket and upended it over himself. He tensed as he felt the unfamiliar change in his body: his chest swelling; hips spreading; other parts disappearing altogether. It was sickening, his body twisting and shrinking; the complete opposite of that red-hot surge of power and strength he normally felt during the transformation to his monster form. He closed his eyes briefly to steady himself.

Awkwardly, he soaped himself, trying to avoid the parts of his body that didn't feel like they belonged to him, and then rinsed off. He tentatively ran his hands over his female body, examining the changes: his shoulders were narrower, his limbs long and slender. He flexed a bicep, frowning at the lack of muscle on his new frame.

He bent down to pick up the soap and bucket, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the water. With a growl, he turned and strode back up to the campsite. Thankfully, the water in the kettle was hot enough to change him back; he poured it over his head, relief filling him as his body returned to normal.

He pulled on his white pants and scaled vest, trying to ignore the image he had seen reflected in the stream: his own face, instantly recognisable and hardly changed, atop an obviously female body. From somewhere in the back of his mind a thought surfaced, how attractive the combination had been… how _right_ it looked. He squashed that thought, angrily. At least fem-boy's cursed and normal forms had been different enough for others to mistake them for two separate people; his could not.

He checked the rice. It was cooked.

"Hey fem-boy, wake up." Tarou called. He gave the sleeping Ranma an impatient nudge with his foot. No response. With a grin, he upended his water bottle over the pigtailed boy, who instantly woke up with an indignant – and now porcine – squeal.

"Bwee! Bweeeeee!"

Chuckling, Tarou emptied the last of the kettle on the little pig, transforming it into an angry, wet Ranma.

"What the hell didja do that for, you jerk?!" Ranma yelled, folding his arms across his chest. "You could've just woken me up normally!"

"I tried," Tarou replied, smirking. "Besides, I prefer this way." He scooped some rice into his own bowl, and then tossed an empty bowl in the pigtailed boy's direction. "Eat up. It's time to get going."

---

Ranma and Tarou set off shortly after breakfast and continued further into the mountains looking for signs of Ryouga, but finding none. Whatever mood Tarou had been in the day before that had kept him civil had left as of that morning, and, as the day wore on, was acting more and more prickly and irritable, throwing around insults and snide remarks at every opportunity. Naturally, Ranma had responded by calling the other boy by his name, and before long, all conversation between the two had degenerated into name calling and exchanging blows as they walked.

As the afternoon wore on, heavy storm clouds began to roll in and a cool wind began to blow in short, damp gusts. Ranma decided to make camp early and hurriedly pitched the tent, finishing only minutes before the first raindrops fell.

Ranma opened the tent-flap and peered into the darkness. He had known the storm was still raging outside, but the act of checking took his mind off the storm brewing inside the tent.

"So let me just sum up our situation. Your moronic friend can get lost walking down the street. He can now fly, so you have no idea if he's even still in Japan. On top of that, your _brilliant_ plan to track him down consists of what? Strolling around Japan until he just decides to show up?!"

Oh gods, Ranma thought, here we go again. Admittedly, his plan didn't seem quite so stellar when spelt out like that, but the sheer smugness of the Chinese boy and his obvious enjoyment of yet another verbal sparring match was making his fists itch. "Well, he usually _does_ just show up. There've been heaps of times when we've run into each other while out training or something."

"Young love," Tarou interjected sarcastically, clasping his hands over his heart.

Ranma cradled his head in his hands while he fought back the urge to clout the other boy over the head. "Someone's gotta have seen him," he continued. "Maybe Nabiki's got some leads. A two story tall butt-ugly, tentacled, flying monster doesn't just disappear." He grinned as Tarou bristled at the insult.

"And who were you going to ask, genius? It was _your _idea to avoid other people."

"Because that's what Ryouga will be doing. Unless he's found a way to change back, he'll be hiding."

"From you?"

"From everyone. He won't like scaring people, and when he gets upset he tends to disappear."

"Do I need to guess who normally upsets him?" Tarou smirked.

"You'd know all about upsetting people! It's all you ever do. Ever wondered _why_ you got no friends? It's got nothin' to do with your name. It's just you, Pantyhose!"

"Shut up! And stop calling me that!!"

Ranma never even saw it coming. A swift kick sent him flying out into the rain, instantly triggering the pig curse. He gave an involuntarily whimper as his whole body constricted and shrunk around him, his mind seeming to contract in on itself.

Growling, Ranma bounded back into the tent and launched himself at Tarou's face, scrabbling with his little hooves furiously.

"Cool it, piggy," the Chinese boy said, seizing the piglet by the scruff of the neck. "I quite like pork," he added with a dangerous glint in his eyes.

Ranma struggled against the vice-like grip, his flush of rage unexpectedly engulfed by waves of terror rising up from the back of his piglet brain. His heart was racing; beating so fast it was practically humming in his chest. He fought to push the fear away; telling himself that Tarou was only teasing, but his rational mind had completely lost control to the survival instincts of the little pig.

Tarou chuckled, apparently enjoying the little pig's reaction, and then lowered Ranma to the floor. "Tomorrow morning, we are going to head back down to that village we saw before we made camp, and find out if anyone has seen any trace of your friend." The phrase 'your friend' had been spat out contemptuously, as though it were even more of an insult than any of his standard derogatory nicknames. "And when you phone home, I _suggest_ you get Nabiki to expand her search area to outside Japan. That idiot could be halfway across China by now." He pressed his hand to the side of the kettle and smiled. "The water's gone cold. I guess you'll be spending the night like that."

Ranma's heartbeat didn't slow completely until Tarou had curled up on his bedroll. He walked over to his own bedroll and lay down. Ranma knew he was no coward, but he was stunned to realise how completely helpless he had been in the face of such abject terror. Had he actually been in danger, could he have regained enough control to save himself?

Ryouga had almost been eaten on several occasions. He remembered Ryouga telling him how he had nearly been turned into sweet and sour pork at Jusenkyou. Later, Shampoo had tried to cook him for Ranma's lunch. What else had the lost boy faced while alone out here in the mountains? He couldn't blame Ryouga for wanting to be rid of his curse; maybe he'd be happier as a monster than a helpless, tiny, black piglet.

Ranma heard Tarou's breathing slow, indicating that the Chinese boy had fallen asleep. He wondered how long it would be before the two had a serious fight. Not that he would mind giving the jerk a thrashing, especially after tonight, but he didn't want to risk having Tarou leave. He couldn't risk the Chinese boy finding Ryouga and a cure without him, and although he didn't like to admit it, he knew just how long he would survive if he were abandoned out here in piglet form.

---

The next morning, Ranma awoke to the mingled smells of wood smoke and … roast chicken? He sniffed again. Whatever it was, it smelt good.

He nosed open the tent flap and peered outside. The rain had stopped, quite recently judging by the amount of water on the ground, but it was still overcast. Despite the damp, Tarou had managed to get a fire going, and he had put on some rice to cook. Somehow, he had also caught, plucked and gutted two small ducks, which were now skewered rotisserie style over the fire. Best of all, the kettle was sitting beside the fire, still steaming.

Tarou himself was in nearby clearing, moving quickly and fluidly through a series of difficult kata. He was _very_ good, Ranma admitted grudgingly. Ranma's own style was very fast and graceful, but the other boy moved like a dancer. The Chinese boy's skill did not lie with simply with his speed though; he could put a deceptive amount of power behind his kicks and punches as well.

When he'd finished, Tarou returned to the fire and rotated the ducks. They appeared to be cooked.

"Bweee!" Ranma squealed. He sat down by the kettle and gave it a tap with his hoof to attract attention. Tarou stared down at him intently for several moments, and then picked up the kettle and poured a stream of hot water over him. Ranma sighed with relief. The Chinese boy seemed to be in a slightly better mood this morning; perhaps it would be best to try and keep him that way.

"Thanks, man."

Ranma looked around for the clothes he had lost when he'd transformed in the rain, and found them slung haphazardly over a low hanging tree branch. They were still damp, so he grabbed a spare pair of clothes from the tent and pulled them on. He sniffed again. "Smells good. Where'd the ducks come from?"

"Where do you think? I caught them," Tarou said quietly, deftly separating a duck into portions with a knife.

"With a trap?"

"No. With a stick." Tarou picked up a foot-long length of wood, and mimed throwing it with a low, sweeping motion before tossing it onto the fire. "You've never had to hunt for yourself?"

"Not really. Pop and me used to fish sometimes. Mostly we just bought stuff." Or stole it, Ranma thought to himself. Or went hungry. "So, is this an apology or something?"

"What?"

"You know… for tossin' me out into the rain and stuff."

The withering glance he received indicated exactly what Tarou thought of that idea. "Don't flatter yourself," he snorted contemptuously. "This is just what I'd normally do if I didn't have you hanging around."

So much for trying to keep the jerk in a good mood, Ranma thought. "I guess you do this a lot, huh?"

"None of your business," Tarou muttered.

"Hey, I was just being friendly," Ranma said, raising a hand defensively.

Tarou's grey eyes locked onto Ranma's, observing him coolly. He handed Ranma some meat and a bowl of rice, and then sat down with his own.

"Thanks. I guess I'm lucky it's not pork, right?"

Tarou chuckled. "I figured you wouldn't taste very good anyway."

Ranma tasted the duck cautiously; Tarou had apparently found something in Kasumi's travelling supplies to season it with. "Hey, this is really good," he said appreciatively. He took a bigger bite.

"It should be. This is how I live."

Ranma barely heard the words; they had been said so quietly. "Really? So you got no home or nothing?"

"No"

"What about your village?"

"What about it? Don't get me wrong, I _choose_ to live like this," Tarou said, the barest hint of defiance entering his voice.

"Why? Don't you have family?"

"None of your business."

Tarou gave Ranma a stern look and continued eating. Realising that the other boy wasn't going to be answering any further questions, Ranma did the same.

---

By late morning, the two boys had arrived at a small town nestled in a valley. Tarou was surprised that his idiot travelling companion hadn't argued about going there, especially since he hadn't been in much shape to argue last night. At least fem-boy did seem to be making an effort to be less irritating this morning. Maybe Ranma wasn't the type to hold a grudge, or perhaps he just come to terms with who was the brains of the pair. And besides, Tarou thought to himself with a smile, he had a vested interest in getting fem-boy back to his original form.

He looked around to confirm that Ranma was still talking on the phone. He had talked to the middle Tendou girl for several minutes. From the sound of it, she hadn't found out anything useful, but Tarou had been pleased to hear Ranma take his advice and ask her to start checking for sightings across all of Asia. He had then asked for Akane, at which point Tarou had moved out of earshot; the last thing he needed to hear was Ranma fumbling his way through a conversation with his fiancé.

Finally, he heard the click as Ranma hung up the phone.

"She didn't find anything?"

"No," Ranma answered as he approached, "but she'd come up with a long list. It took us a while to go through it. She said something about lights in the sky near here though… you didn't splash yourself with a spring that adds the ability to glow in the dark, did you?"

"Spring of Drowned Firefly?" he chuckled. "No."

"Time to start asking around, I guess."

The first door they came to was opened by a dainty, middle-aged woman. Ranma gave her a broad smile and swaggered forward.

"Excuse me. I'm Ranma Saotome of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts," he said. He gestured towards Tarou, eyes glinting mischievously. "And this is..."

Tarou's heart sank. He should have known better than to think that Ranma wouldn't take advantage of such a perfect opportunity to humiliate him. "Don't," he warned quietly.

Ranma continued, laughing, "…his name is…"

"Shut up!" Tarou growled, clouting the pigtailed boy over the head with a fist.

"Okay, he's sorta my sidekick," Ranma conceded, rubbing the back of his head. "Anyway, we're tracking down a dangerous monster that's s'posed to be hanging around here. Have you heard anything about it?"

The woman eyed the two of them warily.

"Fighting monsters is a sacred part of a martial artist's duty," Ranma added, striking what he presumably thought to be a heroic pose.

The woman apologised and closed the door.

"I think you scared her," Ranma offered, sniggering.

"No, that was you being an idiot." Tarou cuffed the other boy over the head. "Sidekick?" he snorted disgustedly.

"Oh, so you'd prefer Pant-"

Ranma's next words were cut off abruptly when Tarou clamped a hand firmly over his mouth. Surprisingly, the pigtailed boy didn't struggle, but instead just looked up at him, blue eyes still twinkling with merriment.

"Shut up! Just …don't call me that. And I'm _not_ your sidekick." Tarou slowly released his grip on Ranma's mouth, and they started walking on towards the next house. "I'll do it myself. That way you won't screw things up."

"Lemme guess," Ranma said, rolling his eyes, "you're gonna beat it out of them?"

"I don't beat up people for no reason," Tarou growled.

None of the next dozen people they interviewed had seen or heard anything either. It was starting to look as though Ryouga hadn't been through the area.

"No, I haven't seen anything but Kaitou told me that something big had gotten into his garden. You should ask him. He lives in the last house on this street, on the left."

It didn't sound like much of a lead but, being the only one they had, Tarou and Ranma went to investigate. Kaitou, as it turned out, had several fruit trees in his back yard which had been destroyed by an animal sometime during the night.

"I don't know what kind of animal could have done this, though," the old man said. "Whatever did it was really big. It even stripped the fruit off the tops of the trees. It left tracks everywhere too… cloven hooves, like a pig or a cow."

With a smirk, Tarou turned to Ranma who grinned back at him. "That sounds like our monster. Could we see your yard?"

The old man hadn't been exaggerating: the orchard was a mess. The fence had been knocked down, and every one of the fruit trees had been completely stripped of fruit, and by something either clumsy or in a great hurry judging by the discarded branches on the ground. More conclusively though, there were hoof prints the size of dinner plates dug into the soft ground: the hoof prints of a giant ox.

Tarou bent down to examine a hoof print. It had water in it, and had been partially washed away; Ryouga had been here not too long before the end of the storm last night. He looked up to see Ranma following the tracks away from the orchard. Apparently ex-pig-boy was on foot, which would make it much easier to track him down. Things were looking up.

Tarou jogged over to Ranma. "He's about twelve hours ahead. If he's stayed walking, we should be able to catch him by sunset."

"What are we waiting for, then? Let's go."

The hoof prints were obvious enough to allow the two boys to follow them easily at a jog, a pace they could both keep up for hours on end. The tracks led in a vague, meandering path, but were generally headed in the direction of the mountains.

"Is the idiot incapable of walking in a straight line?" Tarou asked with a smirk.

"Yeah, pretty much."

By late afternoon, the two boys were high in the mountains. The clouds in the sky had thickened ominously, and the wind blew in gusts, cool and thick with moisture. Tarou could smell damp earth on the wind: rain wouldn't be far off. He pulled his cloak out of his backpack and draped it around his shoulders. He turned around to Ranma who had been watching him in bewilderment; the pigtailed boy's expression soon turned to shocked realisation.

"I knew I forgot something!" Ranma groaned.

"What?"

"I didn't bring an umbrella or anything! I'm such an idiot!"

"Looks like we finally agree on something," Tarou said smoothly.

"What do I do? I'll turn into a pig!"

"Hope I'm wrong about the rain, porkchop."

Smirking, Tarou hoisted his backpack back onto his shoulders, and both boys set off again at a run. He was astonished how anyone with a Jusenkyou curse could forget about the weather. He always had his cloak with him, and he had seen the big red umbrella that Ryouga carried. Fem-boy was obviously even denser than he had imagined; either that or perhaps he didn't dislike his girl body as much as claimed to.

There was a rumble of thunder and then the rain began to fall in fat, cold drops.

"Bweeeee!!"

At the noise, Tarou stopped and turned to the piglet. It was sitting on the ground, looking pathetically up at him. Just then, an ear-splitting bovine roar came echoing through the trees: they had caught up with Ryouga.

Quick as a flash, Tarou scooped up Ranma's backpack and sprinted off in the direction of the noise. They might not get another chance to catch Ryouga; the little idiot pig would have to catch up as best it could.

Tarou caught sight of Ryouga-monster milling around in a large clearing between the trees. He dropped the backpacks on the ground and approached the huge beast. It returned his gaze, cautiously at first, then with increasing anger. It stepped forward, clenching a massive fist. Tarou raised his fists in an offensive stance.

"You think I won't fight you in that body, is that it?" he asked, quietly amused. "I know what that body is capable of, I know its weaknesses. So, you can come quietly or not. It's all the same to me."

Ryouga-monster lumbered forward, huge fist swinging down towards him. Tarou waited until it was almost on top of him, and then nimbly dodged out of the way, smirking. This boy was much slower than he had been in this body; this should be easy. Ryouga lunged again, faster this time; Tarou dodged again and ducked around behind him.

"I thought you'd at least make this challenging for me."

Ryouga growled and then rushed forward faster, his fist outstretched. Tarou evaded the fist easily, and darted around behind the monster again. As he had anticipated, the beast swung around in an attempt to catch him but its comparatively tiny hooves could not find enough purchase in the mud. One leg twisted under it awkwardly and it fell to the ground with a howl of pain. Before it had a chance to rise, Tarou sprung up onto the creature's head and aimed a series of devastating punches to its eyes.

The next thing Tarou knew, his cloak had been seized in the beast's fingers and he was dangling in the air. With a dismissive flick of the huge fingers, he was sent flying through the air and landed heavily on his back. He groaned in pain, cursing himself for not having removed the cloak earlier.

He carefully worked his way to his feet, and threw the cloak aside. Immediately, the rain washed over his body, triggering his transformation. This had to be one of the few times he _hadn't_ wanted to trigger his curse during a fight, he thought wryly. He hadn't wanted to fight in this weaker body, but keeping the cloak on had been a dangerous and stupid mistake.

Ryouga-monster had lumbered to his feet. He was limping badly; his leg looked as though it had been badly sprained, but not broken, Tarou noted with surprise. The creature lunged towards him again, a single finger outstretched. Puzzled, Tarou sidestepped the finger easily. It impacted the ground, causing the earth around it to shatter in a massive explosion. He was flung through the air again along with a bunch of boulders.

He landed roughly, and then quickly twisted out of the path of two enormous rocks that would otherwise have crushed him. That was Bakusai Tenketsu, he realised. It was an old Joketsuzoku trick, one he should have recognised sooner. That explained why his opponent was so tough. It would be worthless trying to trick him into hitting himself with those boulders.

Ryouga-monster stepped forward again and jabbed a finger into the ground, angled away from him so that the resultant blast was directed forward towards Tarou. Then, as the Chinese boy leapt to avoid it, he jabbed at the ground again and again, filling the air with flying boulders. In midair, Tarou was unable to dodge the incoming onslaught and was struck from the left by what felt like a flying mountain. The force of the impact smashed it apart and he plummeted to the ground amidst the rubble.

Pain engulfed him, emanating from his shoulder. His left shoulder joint was grossly swollen and was sitting too far forward. He hoped it was dislocated rather than broken, but in any case it would be useless for the rest of the fight. Dazed, Tarou staggered to his feet and wiped a trickle of blood away from his mouth, fighting down waves of nausea. His whole body ached and it hurt to breathe. He prodded his side gingerly; by the feel of it, he had also cracked several of his ribs.

Curiously, Ryouga hadn't tried to close the gap between them again. The beast simply stood there calmly, its wrists pressed together and its palms cupped outwards towards him.

Tarou blinked. The world seemed to explode in a white-hot burst of light and pain, knocking him to the ground. It was heavy and dark, and yet somehow blinding and it pressed him into the earth so he couldn't move an inch. It was pressing him down and swirling inside him and he couldn't breathe. Finally the light passed; he closed his eyes and let the darkness swallow him.

* * *

Revision History: Spelling / grammar fixes mainly, plus some minor changes to establish Ranma and Tarou's relationship a little better. 


	3. Chapter 3: Whoever Fights Monsters

Disclaimer: I don't own and didn't create Ranma ½ or any of these characters.

* * *

**Chapter Three: Whoever Fights Monsters**

Furious, Ranma sprinted as fast as he could in the direction Tarou had run off. He was going to pound the jerk into the ground when he found him. If Ryouga hadn't already done it for him, that is.

He heard an explosion from somewhere up ahead in the trees. Tarou would have just sailed in with his fists as usual, and in that monster form, Ryouga would kill him. There were more explosions, bigger than before, followed by the dull thump of falling boulders.

He sped on, squinting his eyes against the rain, wishing his little piglet legs could cover more ground. A flash of reddish light briefly shone through the trees. That was a Shishi Hokodan; a strong one, much bigger than the ones Ryouga had hit Ranma with during his initial practice sessions, which meant that the fanged boy was, by now, well and truly pissed off.

A bellow echoed through the trees, ear-splitting in its intensity. He was very close now. Ranma burst through the last of the trees, just in time to see Ryouga taking to the air.

"Bweeeee!!!" he squealed as loudly as he could, hoping that Ryouga would hear him, but he was already too far away to hear.

He looked around at the large clearing where the fight had been held: it had been obliterated. Pieces of rock ranging from tiny razor sharp shards to chunks larger than a car lay scattered over the shattered ground. Partially hidden behind a huge boulder was the motionless form of Pantyhose Tarou.

Ranma trotted to his side and squealed, nudging the other boy's cheek with his snout. No response. He squealed louder, tapping with his hoof. There was still no response. Had Ryouga killed him? Was he dying? Ranma clambered up with his front hooves onto Tarou's face, and squealed as loud as he could. He leaned in closer, and felt the faintest whisper of a breath upon his face. He was alive. He poked his snout under Tarou's jaw; the pulse was weak but regular.

Satisfied for now, Ranma stepped back and studied the Chinese boy for injuries. Chinese girl, he corrected himself: Tarou had lost his cloak at some stage during the fight. His left shoulder looked dislocated and the multitude of cuts, scrapes and bruises suggested he'd taken a pounding from the rocks, but otherwise he seemed to be in pretty good shape for someone that had just gone toe to toe with a giant minotaur and some flying boulders.

Ranma sat down in the mud, shivering. His fur had been long soaked through by the rain and his tiny body was losing heat quickly; he needed to find some hot water before nightfall. The thick rainclouds made it hard to be certain, but he guessed that he had only another hour before then.

He found the backpacks against a tree at the clearing's edge. They were huge, far bigger than he was, and the trees loomed overhead like scraggly clawed giants. He swallowed, and tried to ignore the faint whisperings of fear that were nipping at the edges of his mind. Oh gods, a twig just snapped! What was that? Nothing, the human part of his mind berated itself, it was just a twig. He wasn't afraid of a stupid twig, was he? No. He needed to think, focus, concentrate on the task ahead. Concentrate on getting back to normal.

Using his nose, teeth and hooves, Ranma started to work open the fastenings on his backpack. Eventually the pack lay open, and he wiggled his way inside to locate the portable gas stove and kettle from within. It felt wonderfully warm and safe in there, nestled amongst the clothes, but he did his best to ignore the feeling. It was still raining hard after he had emerged from the pack, having dragged the kettle and stove free. He might not be able to change back into a guy while it was raining, but at least he could use it to fill the kettle - which would save him having to wrestle with the screw topped water bottles. Ranma dragged the kettle underneath a thin stream of water trickling down the tree from a low hanging, downward pointing branch.

He peered up through the branches, trying to guess the time. The sky had darkened; there was perhaps only about half an hour left before sunset. On the other hand, the rain appeared to be letting up. Good, that meant he could change back. Provided it didn't stop too soon and leave him with too little water to change back with, that is.

He heard a strangled cry from the trees behind him and froze. What was that? Some kind of animal? He heard the cry again, from closer. A fox, and it was approaching. A predator. His heart began to pound in his chest. He scurried back into the backpack, cursing himself for allowing a threat to sneak up on him. He had been too focused on changing back, and hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings.

The fox walked into view with its nose to the ground. It stopped and sniffed the air. Had it smelt him? He could certainly smell it – his nostrils were being assaulted by the rank, musky fox smell. His mouth went dry as another wave of terror washed over him. He shrank down as small as possible behind a bundle of shirts, hoping against hope that it couldn't find him.

It began to walk towards him, still sniffing the air. His flight instinct kicked in, every fibre in his body was screaming at him to run. It took every ounce of his willpower to not give into it. He could feel his body trembling, his control slipping, the terror gnawing at him. If he didn't do something – anything! – soon, he would lose control of the piglet. There had to be a way out of this! Ryouga must have dealt with hungry animals before, and, if he could think of a way out, there was _no damn way_ that Ranma Saotome wouldn't do the same!

He couldn't risk getting trapped in the backpack and didn't know if he could outrun a fox, but perhaps if it wasn't too hungry he could scare it away. It was only an animal, after all. All he'd have to do was hurt it. He stepped out into the open and positioned himself into the best approximation of a combat stance that his piglet body could do.

The fox rushed in. Ranma waited until it was almost upon him, snapping down at the back of his neck. The fear was gone, pushed aside by the familiar adrenalin rush of battle. He rolled away from the closing jaws, and then launched himself upwards as hard as he could into its throat. It gave a startled squeak then turned, snarling and biting at him. He leapt clear and ran away a short distance. The fox attacked again. Ranma launched himself at its face, scrabbling furiously with his hooves, and then bounced away out of range.

The fox remained at a distance, eyeing him warily. Ranma glanced behind him; he had accidentally worked his way close to Tarou. It was likely that the fox was more scared of a person than it was of a tasty looking – but psychotic – little piglet. His eyes never leaving his attacker, Ranma kept backing up until he was at the Chinese boy's side. The fox approached cautiously at first, but shied away as it came too near the fallen boy. Apparently deciding that the small creature it had targeted was not worth the effort, the fox turned and trotted away.

Ranma breathed a sigh of relief as his heartbeat slowed down to normal. The rain had almost stopped, just the occasional drop falling, but it did not look as though it would let up for long. He was starting to feel cold again. Shivering, he leaned in against Tarou for warmth, only to recoil in shock when there was none; the other boy had grown ice cold. With growing alarm, Ranma checked Tarou's pulse. He was still alive, but he was pale and his pulse had weakened.

Ranma raced back to the trees and checked the kettle; it was about half full, more than enough to change him back. With difficulty, he managed to manoeuvre the kettle onto the portable gas stove and turned it on. Why hadn't he thought to put a blanket on the other boy? He had been left too long lying in the rain. And here _he_ was, stuck in this helpless little pig form, unable to help the only person who could protect him while he was like this; the very person who, only a few hours earlier, had been more than happy to leave him behind.

Hadn't he done that to Ryouga though? He had splashed him with cold water and booted him deep into the forest at Ryugenzawa, a forest teeming with oversized, dangerous animals. All because he had been upset about Akane's supposed rejection of him, and he hadn't wanted to deal with Ryouga's heartbreak as well. How many other times had he done something similar to the lost boy?

Ranma checked the kettle: the water was hot. Ranma turned off the gas and carefully slid the heavy kettle to the edge of the stove, spout facing outwards. He only had one shot at this. If he spilled the water now he could waste hours wrestling with the water bottles in order to refill the kettle. He sat up, grasped the kettle between his two front hooves then pressed downwards firmly on the spout with his chin. The kettle tipped, spilling the hot water all over him, changing him back into a man.

He grinned, elated. It was such a simple task when you were a guy, to heat up some hot water in a kettle, made damn near impossible when you were only six inches high and had four legs with hooves rather than hands. In the end though, he had done it. Ranma Saotome never gave up.

Working as quickly as he could without splashing himself, he erected the tent, tossed the backpacks inside and spread out a bedroll. He grabbed Tarou's cloak from where it had been discarded in the mud. It was made of a heavy, warm material, and was still mostly dry on the underside. It would do to protect him from the other boy's wet clothes.

The wind was starting to pick up again, cold against his naked skin. It was about to start raining again.

Ranma bundled up the unconscious Tarou in the cloak and picked him up. In his girl form, the Chinese boy was surprisingly light in his arms. Ranma carried him inside the tent and laid him gently on the bedroll. He had to get Tarou out of his wet clothes and wrap him up in something dry and warm, but before he began, he tugged on a pair of pants. Ranma didn't know what Tarou's reaction would be if he woke up to being undressed by a naked guy, but he suspected it wouldn't be pleasant.

Ranma pulled off the cloak and laid it aside; he could use it if he had to go outside later. He tugged off the pantyhose sash, revealing a leather pouch, about the size of his hand, which had been tucked securely into its folds. He placed them both on the ground. Ranma then set about removing the scaled vest, careful not to move the injured shoulder too much, followed by the matching scaled bracers, the white baggy pants and the shoes. It was lucky that his former girl-curse had left him mostly immune to the sight of a female body: Ryouga would have haemorrhaged and fainted by now. He finished by wrapping a blanket snugly around the Chinese boy, and then left to make some tea to warm himself up.

After he had made the tea, Ranma sat down crosslegged on his bedroll with a blanket draped around his shoulders. He sipped his tea, deep in thought, listening to the hypnotic rhythm of raindrops on canvas. He'd had another of those weird panic attacks again – that feeling of terror, the almost overwhelming need to feel safe and protected. At least this time he'd been able to override it, but it left him troubled all the same. He'd never felt like that before, not even when he was a child. Why would he start feeling like that now?

His eyes drifted back to the leather pouch. Curiosity getting the better of him, he picked it up and turned it over in his hands briefly, then opened it and tipped the contents into his hand. He was surprised by how little there was inside: a hunting knife – one of the folding types – and a sharpening stone, a handful of Chinese coins and notes, a scrap of folded red silk and a small tin with Chinese writing on the lid. He pried the lid off the tin to reveal several short sticks of incense. They smelt strong and unpleasant, but strangely familiar. Puzzled, he pushed the lid back on the tin and dropped it back into the pouch. He opened the silk; it contained a single golden earring, similar to the ones Tarou wore. A spare, maybe? He rewrapped the earring, and placed it and the other items back into the pouch.

He tucked the pouch back into the sash where he had found it, and then lay down on his bedroll, glad to see that the Chinese boy hadn't woken up in the meantime. Tarou would be furious if he found out that Ranma had been poking around in his belongings. He wasn't even sure what he had expected to find – if anything – maybe something that would tell him about the young man he was travelling with. He knew almost nothing about Tarou, other than he was almost always angry and near impossible to get along with for more than two minutes at a time. Actually, he knew very little about most of the martial artists that came through Nerima, even those he had known for a long time. Somehow, amongst all the fighting, rivalry and fiancées, it had never seemed that important.

He closed his eyes. He had initially intended to stay awake until Tarou had woken up, but the stress and exertion of the day had worn him out and before long, he had drifted off to sleep.

_He was a piglet again, racing through the trees as fast as he could. He was alone, no-one to save him, no-one to protect him. He was being chased. At first, he could not tell what by, but the thick, rank smell of foxes that filled his nostrils soon told him. He could hear them behind him, their feet pounding in the mud, getting closer. They were almost on top of him now. He could feel their hot breath panting down his neck, smell its rotting scent. He closed his eyes, waiting for the teeth to sink into his back, biting out his life. _

_He opened his eyes. He was back at the Tendou house now. Akane was there. She had saved him, brought him back somehow. With a happy cry, she picked him up, cradling him in her arms pressed between her breasts. He was warm and safe and loved, and no-one could hurt him again. _

_Suddenly he was himself again, but Akane didn't care. She didn't smack him or call him a pervert, she kept her arms wrapped around him, making him feel warm and safe and loved, and that no-one could hurt him again. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her closely. He reached out and brushed his fingertips across her face. She smiled sweetly up at him and spoke. _

_"You normally undress people while they're asleep, fem-boy?" _

Ranma awoke with a start, and found himself staring into the cold, steel-grey eyes of Tarou. "Hey, you're awake!" he said brightly. It was pitch-black outside the tent; he guessed that had been asleep for at least an hour.

"I notice you left me in girl form, too," the other said, his gaze dark and piercing despite his casual tone.

Ranma sat up hurriedly, his hands raised reflexively. "I wasn't doing anything! I ain't like that!"

"No?" Tarou sat up abruptly and attempted to cross his arms contemptuously. His face twisted with pain as he clutched his left arm. "What happened? How did I get here?"

"You lost the fight with Ryouga. I found you lying unconscious in the rain and I brought you in here. You were freezing cold too, which is why-"

"-which is why I'm not wearing anything?" Tarou interjected, with a sarcastic smirk. "I'm touched." He paused, his expression changing to disgust as he realised what he'd said. "Not literally, I hope. It wouldn't surprise me though, pervert."

"Hey! I did just save your life, you know!" Ranma scowled, beginning to wonder why he had bothered to do so. Of all the ungrateful, prickly, condescending…

Tarou snorted contemptuously. "It'd take more than a little rain to finish me off. And even if you did… why? It's not like I would have done the same for you."

"I'm not like you. I see someone in trouble and I just gotta do something."

Tarou groaned and cradled his head in his right hand. "He hit me with a massive ki blast," he murmured. "I've never felt anything like it."

"Yeah, I know." Ranma smiled knowingly, his previous anger forgotten. "That was a Shishi Hokodan. A strong one too, he must be pretty upset." Ryouga wasn't the only one, Ranma noted; Tarou was visibly flustered, apparently trying to find a way of supporting his left arm with his right without either limb touching his breasts. In the end he gave up, and began gingerly prodding around his injured shoulder, wincing as he did so.

"How's the shoulder?" he asked.

"Dislocated. I can fix it." Ranma stared as the Chinese boy grasped his left upper arm firmly in his other hand and, gritting his teeth, began to pull forward away from his body. Eventually he released his arm and went back to cradling it protectively, his breath coming in ragged gasps from the pain. "Maybe not. The muscles have seized."

"Why don't you let me help?" Ranma offered.

Tarou looked up at him suspiciously. "Why are you helping me?"

Ranma shrugged. "I don't want to waste time trying to find a doctor if we can fix that shoulder now." He almost missed the peculiar expression that flashed briefly in Tarou's eyes; had he seen it on anyone else, he might have guessed it to be gratitude, although he couldn't figure out what he had just said that the other boy would be grateful for.

Tarou nodded reluctantly and lay back on the bedroll. "Come here, sit beside me," he said, gesturing with his left hand. Ranma did so. The Chinese boy took Ranma's right hand in his own, and gently placed it on his injured shoulder. "Here," he said, using his fingertips as a guide. "Feel where the joint is? It needs to be up here." Ranma disentangled his fingers from Tarou's and felt his own shoulder to compare. "Now, what you need to do is pull my arm upward… firmly. The shoulder should slip back in."

Ranma stood, and with a firm grip Tarou's left arm, began to pull steadily upwards until the entire shoulder had been lifted slightly from the ground. He looked down at Tarou curiously.

"Hold… there," Tarou grunted. He closed his eyes and relaxed back against the pull, his breaths forcedly slow and even. Beads of sweat began to form across his brow, running down his face. Finally, the shoulder slipped back into place with a sick, wet clunk.

Ranma lowered the arm gently to the ground. "How did you know what to do? This happened before?"

Tarou nodded slowly, his expression inscrutable.

"When?" The Chinese boy turned to Ranma with a dangerous glare. "Yeah, I know. None of my business, right?"

Ranma pushed aside the tent flap and peered into the night. The rain had stopped again. "I'm gonna make some more tea. Want some? I'll bring in the kettle when I'm done and change you back."

"Yes," Tarou said quietly, his expression unreadable again. "Thank you."

Ranma stood in the dark waiting for the kettle to boil. What a waste of an opportunity. After three days they had tracked down the elusive lost boy, only to have it rain and turn him into a pig. Then there was the problem of his idiot travelling companion taking it into his head to try and go after Ryouga himself. Ranma didn't know whether he could talk Ryouga out of one of his depressive states, but he knew for certain that there wasn't a hope in hell that he would listen to Tarou. That is, assuming the Chinese boy had even attempted talking. A way with words wasn't his forte; at least, not the kind of words that would actually help a tense situation. Ranma knew from past experience that he wasn't exactly gifted in that area himself, but at least he _tried_ to say the right thing.

He sighed. At any rate, with Tarou conscious and his shoulder fixed, they wouldn't need to waste time backtracking to the town in the morning and could head straight out after Ryouga - wherever he had gone. He had flown away from the fight, leaving them with no tracks to follow and no direction to head in.

The water in the kettle was boiling. Ranma switched off the gas stove and picked up the kettle. As he was straightening up, he saw a flash of light from the corner of his eye. He spun around in its direction, just in time to see a pillar of bright reddish light emerge from the trees, higher up on a mountain ridge about a day's journey away. It formed into a huge sphere and began to fall. A Perfect Shishi Hokodan. With a flash of understanding, Ranma realised what it was that Nabiki had reported as 'lights in the sky'. Ryouga had given them a way of tracking him by night.

---

_A rough, calloused hand gripped him by the jaw, tilting his face upwards towards his attacker. Two more pairs of hands gripped him tightly by the arms, and legs scissored around his own prevented him from breaking free. _

_A gruff voice issued from the darkness behind him. "Watch it, boss. He bites." _

_Despite his fear, he allowed himself a satisfied smirk. He could still taste the tang of the man's blood. He heard a whimper from another of his attackers; one had foolishly gotten into range of his feet, and had been rewarded with a lightning fast kick to the groin. _

_The man in front of him tutted disapprovingly, his breath reeking of rice wine. "Such a pretty little thing, too. Your mother never teach you better manners, pantyhose kid?" He glared fiercely at the man and tried to twist his head free of that iron grip. There was a bout of derisive laughter, and his arms were jammed up harder behind his back to the point of pain. "So much for your training. You might be fast but you're still weak as a little girl." _

_There was another burst of laughter from behind him. "Ha! Girly-boy!" _

_He tried to steady himself, tried to ignore the rage and fear welling up from within. It wasn't fair! All he had been doing was going to the well for a drink, since he was no longer allowed water inside the house in case his curse was triggered. These men had seen him and accused him of spying on them. Most of the adults left him alone, but these ones hated him – especially the ringleader. _

_He needed to get away, but they were holding him too tightly. He forced his body to relax, hoping that the men holding him might do the same. _

_"I didn't see nothing," he whispered, relieved that he didn't sound as scared as he felt. "I don't know what you're talking about." _

_The ringleader released his jaw and moved around behind him. He could hear whispering in the dark. He could feel their grips start to loosen. He knew he should run back to the house where he lived, but then he saw the moonlight glinting off the top of a bucket of water by the well. _

_He dove forward, slipping out of the men's hands and unthreading his legs from theirs. In an instant, he was upright again, sprinting toward the well. He heard shouts from behind him. _

_"Hey! Little bastard!" _

_"Keep him away from that water!" _

_They were just behind him. He could feel them breathing over him, smell the rancid stench of too much wine. One of them seized his arm, snapping him back around and throwing him to the ground. A wave of pain exploded from his left shoulder as it hit the ground, forcing him to cry out. Rough hands and heavy bodies piled onto him, holding him down, hurting him. Tears of rage, pain, terror and frustration welled up in his eyes. _

_"Let's teach pantyhose boy a lesson!" _

_From seemingly out of thin air, he heard a voice calling his name. At the same time, the weight seemed to shift from his body, and he lashed out wildly with a clenched fist towards the voice. _

Tarou awoke with a start, and opened his eyes to see Ranma sitting beside him with a look of concern in his clear blue eyes, and the fist that had swung blindly at him moments earlier caught firmly between his palms. He snatched his hand back and clutched at his left shoulder, but the throbbing pain from the dream was already fading.

"You okay, man? You were dreaming."

Tarou blinked, relieved to find that the tears from his dream hadn't made their way into the real world. Sometimes he was just too emotional for his own good, and the last thing he needed was to show any weakness in front of fem-boy.

He sat up and looked around him. Sunlight was streaming in through the open tent flap, and outside he could see a campfire and a cooking pot hanging over it. He sniffed appreciatively, his mouth beginning to water.

"Hungry?" Ranma asked. Tarou nodded in reply. "So am I. Let's eat."

Ranma crouched by the fire. "Kasumi packed the stuff needed to make a curry, so I made one out of the leftover duck from yesterday," he explained. He scooped some rice into a bowl and ladled some curry over the top. Tarou accepted the offered bowl and made a show of sniffing it cautiously.

"Hey! I can cook, you know," Ranma said indignantly, serving a portion for himself.

"I wouldn't expect anything less from you," Tarou replied with a smirk.

Ranma looked puzzled, apparently trying to work out whether he had just been insulted or not. He brightened. "Thanks."

Tarou took a bite of his curry. Surprisingly, it tasted quite good. He finished the rest hungrily.

"You talk in your sleep, you know?" the pigtailed boy asked innocently.

Tarou felt the blood drain from his face and his fists clenched reflexively. If fem-boy had heard…. he could already hear the laughter, the taunts. With a growl, he flung the empty bowl at the pigtailed boy's grinning face. Ranma caught the bowl deftly with his free hand.

"Whoa there, calm down! I don't understand Mandarin, okay? Jeez, I didn't think you'd take it like that!"

Tarou took a moment to compose himself, berating himself for being so easily manipulated by fem-boy. That dream must have unsettled him more than he realised - except that it wasn't just a dream. He'd been twelve years old at the time. He'd upset some drunks late one night, and had been too cocky to realise that he was hopelessly outnumbered. And then they'd called him the Name and his mind had just snapped, the way it always had back then. The way it sometimes did even now.

Tarou became vaguely aware that Ranma had been speaking to him. He looked up curiously.

"So, does this mean you want some more?" Ranma repeated with a smile, gesturing with the empty bowl.

"Uh… yes," Tarou answered, momentarily nonplussed.

Ranma dished out another helping, handed the bowl back, and resumed eating his own.

"You're even touchier than usual this morning. Must've been some dream," Ranma offered casually between mouthfuls.

Ah, so that was it. It appeared that fem-boy was trying to find out what was bothering him; trying to get some more ammunition for their next argument, no doubt.

Tarou held Ranma's gaze with his own, smirking. "Do you have to work at being this annoying, or is it a natural talent?"

"Hey! I wasn't… I was just trying to…" Ranma stammered, visibly flustered.

"What?" Tarou sneered. "Trying to be friendly? Concerned? Or do you just enjoy poking around in other people's business? Back off and leave me alone, fem-boy!"

Without waiting for Ranma's response, Tarou stood up and strode away from the campsite.

"Who are you calling fem-boy, jerk?!" Ranma retorted angrily, watching the rapidly retreating figure. The stupid, oversensitive jerk couldn't even tell when someone was actually trying to be _nice_ to him! He didn't know why he bothered sometimes. Nobody tried to understand his intentions, always judging him and coming to the wrong conclusions. Everybody around him saw only what they wanted to see: the fiancé…the rival…pervert…enemy. Nobody cared how he felt.

He stomped over to the tent and started tugging the pegs out of the ground, prior to packing it up.

---

Tarou finished the kata he had been doing, coming to rest in a horse stance. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing, once again feeling calm and centred. He'd been too close to losing self control and exposing his emotions for his liking. It was far better to be in control of them, especially when you could have so much_ fun_ with those who weren't.

He drew himself upright and squeezed his left shoulder with his right hand. It was still tender, as were his ribs, but thankfully both seemed to be healing quickly. While his human body could hold its own against most opponents, he no longer had his cursed form to fall back on and he hated the thought of being weakened and vulnerable for any longer than he had to be.

He looked around to see Ranma approaching, still looking angry.

"You finished sulking yet?" the pigtailed boy snapped.

"Me sulking?" Tarou answered breezily. "No, I was training. I'm surprised you didn't recognise it." He chuckled. Ranma glared at him.

"I would've offered to spar with you but since you're injured I didn't think it would be very sporting. Pounding the crap out of someone who's injured just ain't my style."

"I'm touched," Tarou smirked. "Not that I'm not enjoying this, but isn't it time to be packing up?"

"I already have. That's what I came to tell you."

Tarou turned and started to walk towards the campsite, stepping around a large puddle left from the previous night's rain. Ranma followed closely behind.

"So, where did you see those lights last night, fem-boy?" he tossed over his shoulder.

"Stop calling me that!!"

Tarou was hit from behind by a surge of water. Instantly, he felt the change shrinking and distorting him. Irritated, he turned around to see Ranma standing smugly by the puddle on one leg, having kicked the surface of the water without getting wet himself. He put his leg down and quickly backed out of the range of the puddle, grinning.

"Oops, sorry," the pigtailed boy sniggered. "I've already packed the kettle up too, so I guess you'll have to stay like that."

Tarou growled and clenched his fists.

"I have a name, remember? So quit it with the fem-boy thing!" Ranma said sternly. He smiled nastily. "Besides, who's the crossdresser now?"

Tarou stepped forward, feeling the familiar surge of his anger rising. His pants were soaked, and they clung to his legs annoyingly. He tightened his sash around his narrower waist and raised his fists.

Ranma laughed again and assumed his combat stance. "You want to fight? Suits me… fem-boy!" he said.

Ranma lunged forward, aiming a flurry of punches at his opponent's face. Tarou dodged the incoming blows with ease, backing away steadily.

"Oh, no you don't," Ranma muttered, spotting the approaching puddle over Tarou's shoulder. "I've seen that trick, remember?"

"Oh?"

Ranma came to a halt. Tarou stepped back several more paces and did the same, considering his options quickly. His left arm would be weaker than usual and most likely slower. If he took a strong hit to his cracked ribs, they could end up broken. To top it off, he was fighting in a body that he wasn't used to, one that – if Ranma's girl form was any indication – would be weaker than his male body. Possibly faster, though.

"What was that about not fighting the injured?" Tarou chuckled. "Or did you realise that was the only way you'd actually beat me? Very sporting."

"This is from someone who likes to soak their opponents before a fight?"

"Isn't that what you just did to me?"

"I was inspired," Ranma spat contemptuously.

"Or maybe you just wanted to see my girl body again?"

"What?!" Ranma shouted, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "No!!"

"Didn't you get a good enough look last night?" Tarou asked languidly, raising an eyebrow in a manner he hoped would appear seductive. "You only like girls when they're really guys? Pervert."

"That's it! I ain't holdin' back no more!!" Ranma roared. He launched himself forward with a flying kick aimed at Tarou's chest.

As Ranma approached, Tarou side-stepped the incoming kick and swung around with a swift roundhouse kick. His foot impacted solidly against the side of Ranma's head with a satisfying thwack. He'd been right: his kick definitely wasn't as powerful in this body – it was lucky that he hadn't been relying on it to win. The leg of his pants – sodden from all the water that had trickled down to the cuff while they'd stood still talking – slapped against Ranma's face, spraying him with water. Tarou prayed it was enough to force the change.

The little piglet plummeted to the ground roughly. It clambered to its feet and glared up at him with hatred.

"It's a pity about that kettle being packed, isn't it?" Tarou commented. He was feeling immensely pleased with himself. "I guess you'll be spending the day like that." Ranma grunted angrily in response.

He strode back to the campsite, Ranma following closely behind, and hoisted both backpacks onto his shoulders. He glared down at the little piglet pointedly.

"Now, where was it that you saw the Shishi Hokodan last night?"

As soon as Ranma had pointed a hoof to indicate the direction, Tarou set off at a brisk walk. The little idiot pig would have to keep up as best he could; it was his own fault they would be travelling in their cursed forms for the day.

Tarou didn't reduce the pace the entire day, except to pause briefly a couple of times while Ranma corrected their heading. By late afternoon they were approaching the ridge that Ranma had been steering them towards. Tarou stopped and peered over his shoulder; Ranma was still following at a trot, having fallen quite a distance behind. Tarou dropped the backpacks on the ground and perched on a nearby rock while he massaged the feeling back into his shoulders. He took a swig from his water bottle, enjoying the short break while the piglet caught up.

Despite the pace he had pushed, they hadn't managed to cover as much ground as he had hoped. He was feeling unusually worn out too, most likely caused by having to carry both backpacks with his lighter and less muscular female body. He wasn't the only one feeling the strain, he noted with satisfaction; Ranma was completely exhausted. The little piglet waddled up and collapsed in a heap at his feet, breathing heavily.

Tarou swallowed another mouthful of water. Ranma looked up with a grunt and pointed with a hoof at the bottle; apparently he was thirsty too. Tarou couldn't blame him – it had been a warm day. He took another swig of water and grinned spitefully down at the piglet. It was sitting at his feet, staring up at him pathetically with huge, round, glistening eyes. With a sigh, he crouched down and poured some water into a cupped hand. No one could say he was completely heartless, he thought to himself.

The piglet looked disdainfully – or at least, the closest piggy approximation of it – at his hand, and then stared up at him like it thought he was crazy.

"What? You were expecting a water dish?" Tarou asked with some amusement. "Take it or leave it." He tilted his hand as if to tip the water out. Ranma shoved his muzzle into his hand and quickly sucked up the water. Tarou chuckled to himself. He quite liked Ranma in this form; dependent, vulnerable and most importantly, quiet.

He stood up, heaved the backpacks back onto his shoulders and started to march off. He had barely gone ten paces before he heard an indignant squeal from behind him. Ranma hadn't moved.

"I want to get to the base of that ridge before we make camp. Are you coming or not?"

The piglet shook its head, and then flopped out onto the ground in an exaggerated manner, still breathing heavily. Tarou guessed that the exaggeration had been done to communicate his tiredness; Ranma did appear to be genuinely exhausted, rather than just acting.

Tarou tapped his foot impatiently. He should just leave the little idiot here to fend for himself; it's what Ranma would do to him. All the same, he would have expected Ranma to have left him out in the rain with his injuries, and he hadn't. The pigtailed boy had helped fix his shoulder, too. He wasn't naïve enough to think there wouldn't be a catch though; the last time he had accepted help from Ranma he had been double-crossed and had ended up nearly fried by that maniac Ashura-cursed woman.

"If I didn't need you later..." he muttered under his breath. He marched over, scooped up the piglet and then strode off in the direction of the ridge.

---

Ranma leaned back into the crook of Tarou's arm with a sigh. He had been utterly exhausted, and the gentle rocking motion of the Chinese boy's movement was profoundly relaxing. While he didn't like the idea of being held by Tarou, it was infinitely preferable over being forced to walk the rest of the way. The fact that he was actually being carried had come as a huge surprise; Tarou had been the one who had forced him to travel as a pig, turned him into a pig the day before, had tried to kill him several times for no apparent reason, insulted him all the time… but on _rare_ occasions, he could act almost… kindly.

Travelling as a pig had been gruelling. He had been forced to keep up a brisk trot for the entire day and, although he was extremely fit, the piglet body seemed to tire very easily. Several times the terrain had become rougher, and the rocks and ditches that he normally would just step over without even thinking had to be climbed over. When he had inevitably fallen behind, the forest seemed to close in around him and every sound was magnified; the leaves in the breeze, a bird's call, the rustling of a small animal in the bushes – every sound like an alarm in his head, warning of danger.

He hated the fear that came when he was alone in this body, and he hated the almost overwhelming need for comfort and protection that followed. Ranma Saotome didn't need comfort and affection like some sissy girl. He was strong, he didn't need anybody to look after him; _he_ should be the one to protect the weak – not the other way around.

He had a sudden mental image of P-Chan nestled in Akane's arms, practically oozing with contentment. Ranma had always thought that was just Ryouga's way – fragile, emotional Ryouga finding comfort in the only way he knew how. He hadn't considered how much the piglet curse might be to blame.

Ranma was startled from his reverie by a familiar scent wafting past. He breathed in deeply, trying to identify that one particular scent that had awoken him. His sense of smell was considerably stronger in this form. He could smell the trees, earth, some unidentifiable animal odours, something that was a peculiar blend of male and female (Tarou, presumably) and, here and there, a sulphurous smell – a hot spring! He could change back into a guy! He sniffed again, trying to determine the direction. As far as he could tell, it was nearby and getting closer, but off to the left.

He looked up to see if Tarou had noticed, but he was just staring ahead impassively as he walked. He grunted to attract Tarou's attention.

"What do you want?" the Chinese boy grumbled irritably.

Ranma pointed a hoof in the direction of the hot spring and squealed.

"No, this way," Tarou said, pointing straight ahead.

Ranma shook his head impatiently and pointed again. This was getting frustrating. How did you try to convince someone to go where you told them to when you couldn't talk? He sniffed exaggeratedly, trying to indicate that he'd smelt something, and then pointed with his hoof.

Tarou stopped and looked at him curiously. Ranma sniffed and pointed once again, nodding excitedly when he saw Tarou sniff the air himself. He pointed again.

"Fine. We'll go your way."

Relieved, Ranma settled back into his resting place as Tarou starting walking towards the hot spring.

They had almost reached the base of the ridge when Tarou stopped again briefly.

"I can smell it now. Hot spring, right?" Ranma nodded. "It's a bit rough when a pig tells me to take a bath," he muttered, but without the usual sarcastic edge to his voice.

The hot spring was set into rocks near the base of a cliff; it was more than large enough for the two of them. As soon as he'd been set down, Ranma sprinted over to it and jumped in with a happy squeal. He relaxed back against the rocks at the pool's edge with a contented sigh. It was good to be a guy again – good to be human again, he corrected himself.

He turned to see Tarou approaching, soap and washing bucket in hand.

"Pigs were not built for long distance travel," Ranma said wearily. "I'm even too tired to kick your butt for makin' me travel like that."

"You sure you don't want to try?" Tarou asked, raising an eyebrow hopefully.

"Nah, maybe later."

Absent-mindedly, Ranma kicked at the surface of the water, watching as Tarou put down the bucket and began to strip off.

"What are you looking at?" Tarou asked irritably, kicking his pants off his ankles. Her pants, her ankles, Ranma's brain interjected.

"I'm not looking. It's just..." Ranma faltered.

"Just what?" Tarou stood glaring down at Ranma impatiently, hands on hips.

"You're lucky… with that body, I mean." Tarou's eyes had narrowed, unimpressed. "You still look like you," Ranma clarified quickly. "If you wore baggy clothes like mine and strapped your chest down, you'd still look like a guy. I can't. My girl body is too short and my hair's the wrong colour."

Kneeling, Tarou dipped the bucket in the hot spring and emptied it over himself. "I'd look as much like a guy as I normally do, you mean?" he said quietly.

Ranma blinked in surprise. "No, I didn't say that!"

Tarou finished soaping up his now male body and rinsed himself off with another bucket of water from the spring. He stepped into the pool opposite Ranma and settled back into water with a sigh. Ranma climbed out and began to lather the soap over his body.

"You know, it's kinda weird being out here like this. It's like I keep havin' to work together with enemies and rivals. Like with Ryouga… we fought all the time. But we've been through a lot together. I've saved his life, he's saved mine and all that. Turned out he wasn't such a bad guy. Mousse, too."

"You're friends?"

"Sort of." Ranma shrugged. "Dunno, really. Don't know what they'd say about me."

He rinsed himself off and climbed back into the hot spring, settling back into a comfortable niche in the rocks he had found earlier. He looked across at Tarou, who was leaning back against the rocks with his eyes closed. It seemed as good a time as any to broach the subject Ranma had been eager to discuss since the previous day.

"So… why'd you attack Ryouga?"

The Chinese boy opened his eyes and gazed at him irritably. "I didn't."

"What happened, then?"

"He saw me. He started to get angry. Then he attacked."

"Did you say anything that would've pissed him off?"

"No," Tarou said abruptly. He then paused for a moment, thinking, and then shrugged. "I did say that he could come quietly, but that I wouldn't back down if he didn't."

"Yeah, that'd do it." Ranma muttered. Ryouga wouldn't back down from a perceived challenge, especially not from someone he disliked such as Pantyhose Tarou. "I told you you'd need me to get Ryouga back, didn't I? You should've waited for me."

Tarou folded his arms across his chest crossly. "And what would you have done, genius?"

"Talked to him."

"And?"

"And what?"

"What would you have said?" Tarou said, looking mildly amused.

Ranma shrugged. "Dunno. I would've thought of something."

"And if he didn't listen? You said he'll be angry and upset. You also said you used to be enemies. Have you thought that he might not listen to you?" He gave a chuckle. "Your brain and your mouth aren't always on speaking terms, fem-boy. What makes you think you'll even say the right thing?"

"Hey!" Ranma exclaimed, angrily. "And stop calling me fem-boy!! I'm a guy! I don't even have the girl-curse and you _still_ keep calling me fem-boy!" He was surprised to hear that his voice had risen to a shout.

"I guess it stuck," Tarou quipped.

"I have a name. Use it. Or don't call me anything. But quit it with the fem-boy thing! And crossdresser! I'm a guy! Even when I'm a girl, I'm a guy!"

"Even when you're a pig?" Tarou interjected breezily.

"Yes! I'm still a guy…" Ranma ground to a halt, his momentum suddenly lost as he realised that Tarou was not only unfazed by his rant, he was quite obviously enjoying it. Realisation dawned. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

Tarou simply chuckled in reply.

"That wasn't very nice."

"I don't pretend to be nice."

Ranma leaned back into the water, puzzled at how the Chinese boy had managed to derail a simple conversation so quickly. "What is it with you and names, anyway?" he asked, curious.

Tarou's face fell, suddenly serious again. "What?" he muttered suspiciously.

"You won't call anyone by their name. Just 'cause you don't like yours, it don't mean you can't use theirs. People mightn't call you … well, you know… if you didn't keep calling them things like fem-boy and pig-boy and stuff."

Tarou folded his arms petulantly across his chest and scowled, his gaze fixed on the water in front of him.

"What I don't get is why it's such a big deal in the first place," Ranma ploughed on, undaunted. "I mean, your name's Japanese, right? How many people in China would even know what it meant? How'd you find out what it meant? And what difference does it make, anyway?"

Tarou lifted his head and locked eyes with Ranma, a look of cold hatred burning in his grey eyes. Ranma felt his mouth fall open; the force of that gaze was almost tangible, boring into him deeply. The Chinese boy rose stiffly, climbed out of the hot spring and stomped off, his fists clenched so tightly that the knuckles had gone white.

Ranma watched the retreating figure, numbly. He scolded himself for being tactless, for once not just because he could be turned into a helpless little black pig and abandoned in the mountains with no supplies. A couple of days ago, he would have enjoyed angering Tarou like that. He would have given chase and tried to stir him up further, perhaps goaded him into a fight with a few well-timed pantyhose remarks. A couple of days ago, he _wouldn't_ have seen the look of anguish that had been in those eyes, barely concealed behind the hatred.

---

"Curse that stupid fem-boy!!" Tarou muttered under his breath, as he extracted his fist from the tree trunk in front of him. Curse that idiot for making him lose his self control. For asking him questions he shouldn't be asking, making him remember things that he had almost blocked out – things he didn't want to remember. Curse that stupid shoulder injury, for reminding him of that time when he had injured it before. Curse that bloody curse-swapping water for leaving him with this stupid weak body and causing him to get re-injured in the first place. And most of all, curse his stupid name, without which his life wouldn't have been the torment it was!

He'd had to get out of there. It had been so easy to imagine wrapping his fingers around the pigtailed boy's throat and squeezing until those questions stopped; so easy to imagine plunging his fists, over and over, into that too talkative mouth. It was one thing, in a fight, to seize someone by the top of their head and twist; quite another to beat the twerp to death in a murderous rage for asking one question too many. Especially after…

_"You okay, man? You were dreaming." _Concerned, blue eyes looking down at him… worried about him.

_"Why don't you let me help?" _Fingers trailing gently over his injured shoulder. Steady hands gripping his arm firmly, preparing to reset his shoulder.

_"We were enemies, fought all the time…_ _turned out_ _he wasn't such a bad guy." _Not talking about him, but drawing a comparison, as if…

No. Can't think about that.

A faint stinging in his hand brought him back from his thoughts. A quick glance indicated the cause: a fragment of wood from the tree was embedded between the knuckles of his index and middle fingers. Idly, he picked it out, leaving a smear of blood across his fingers. It was strange to see his own blood on his hands. He rubbed at the smear with his other hand until the mark was gone.

Fem-boy had been right about one thing; his name was Japanese, and he hadn't always known what it meant. He had only a dim memory of the first time he had asked about it, most memories of his childhood having faded into a vague, unpleasant blur. The memory tried to surface, but he pushed it away angrily. It rose again, dancing… teasing, and somehow he knew that once summoned, he couldn't make it go away that easily.

He had been about five years old, and his mother had found him crying bitterly over how the other children were scared of him and how they wouldn't let him play with them and how they chased him away and called him freak...

_"Why am I different? Why don't they change in water?"_

She had sat him on her lap, her arms wrapped comfortingly around him as she told him the story of how he had been born. It had been a difficult birth, but a kindly old man had helped her through it. He had taken the newborn baby and bathed him in a spring, but the water had cursed him, changed him into the creature that would become every time he was splashed with cold water.

_"But why? Why can't I just be normal?"_

She hadn't known why. Perhaps it was a custom, she explained. Perhaps it was an accident, although she thought it was unlikely - the old man had seemed so wise and thoughtful. As befitting the custom of their village, she'd asked him to name her son. He had meditated for three days and nights before he could come up with a name he felt suitable. It was Japanese, she had explained, like the man who had named him. That was why it was longer than everybody else's and sounded different. But she was sure it was a good name; that it meant something special.

Tarou snorted in contempt, wondering – not for the first time – what kind of fool would trust something as important as their child's name to someone they had only just met. What kind of fools would base an entire tradition over who could name a child, and who could change that name? And what kind of heartless morons would send a pregnant woman off to work in the fields by herself, where any perverted old goat could come along and help her give birth and bathe her newborn son in a cursed spring and give him a stupid name and then wander off, giving him no way of changing it?

Of course, he had eventually found out about his name. About a year later, a traveller had stayed at the village for several days. It turned out that the man spoke Japanese, and at some point, somebody must have asked what his name meant. Before long, the whole village knew. He had been heartbroken when he'd found out. He was a freak in name as well as body. He didn't know which was worse, being called the name itself or…

_"…pretty little pantyhose boy…" _

…what the name meant. The other children were the worst – jeering, taunting, mocking him; the adults were at least less obvious...

_"…pantyhose bastard…" _

…most of the time. It was then that he began to learn the valuable lesson that screams of terror were infinitely preferable to laughter.

His mother, through either shame or pity, never called him by his name again. Within several months, she would never be able to call him anything again.

Tarou aimed a final, half-hearted punch at the tree. He needed to be calm about this, needed to stay focused, couldn't keep thinking about the past. He needed to find that idiot Ryouga, get their curses switched back, and then he could hand fem-boy over to the old goat like a little pig to the slaughter. And then he would get his name changed. He hadn't managed to actually make the arrangement with Happousai before they'd left – the little freak had kept running away, cackling all the while like it was the best game in the world – but Tarou was certain that he'd agree quickly enough once the plan was explained to him. All he had to do was put up with fem-boy for a little while longer.

Slowly, he walked back to the hot spring. He knelt by the pile of clothes he had removed earlier, studiously avoiding Ranma's gaze which he could feel boring into him. He filled up the washing bucket with hot water, dunked in his pants and began to viciously scrub at them with the soap.

"You can do mine too, if you like," Ranma said, sprawling about in the water lazily. "Y'know, I've been thinking-"

"Really?" Tarou snorted.

"Yeah, really," Ranma continued, his voice hardening briefly. "You got any powerful techniques I haven't seen yet? Ki attacks?"

Tarou looked up from his washing suspiciously. "Why?"

"If I can't talk Ryouga down… and I'm not saying I can't, just _if_ I can't… we'll have to fight him."

"And you want to find out whether I have any techniques that might be useful."

"Ryouga's a helluva lot tougher than you in his normal body," Ranma said. "I doubt even that pantyhose rebound kick woulda knocked him out. Unless I can get to him with some hot water and change him back, I gotta come up a way to defeat him in that body."

Tarou folded his arms across his chest and looked down at Ranma pointedly. "Does this mean you'll tell me about the techniques you have that I haven't seen?"

Ranma hesitated. "Sure," he said eventually. "We're gonna have to work together, right?"

Tarou drummed his fingers on his bicep. "Fine. You first."

Ranma crossed his arms and glared indignantly up at Tarou. "What? Don't you trust me?"

Tarou nearly burst out laughing, but instead settled for merely raising an eyebrow. "Are you saying you trust me?"

"You? Not a chance!" Ranma sniggered. "I trust you about as much as I trust the freak around undies!"

Tarou gave an indifferent snort to show just how little he cared about Ranma's opinion of him, and then went back to his washing.

"Okay. Fine. I'll go first." Ranma paused, forehead creased. "Maybe the Hiryuu Shoten Ha. But he helped me train in it and knows how to avoid it. And he can fly, so it might not have that much effect."

Tarou nodded in agreement, surprised that Ranma had known the Hiryuu Shoten Ha.

"Moko Takabisha… nah, too weak."

"Never heard of it."

"It's my counter to Ryouga's Shishi Hokodan," Ranma explained carefully. "A perfect Shishi Hokodan might be strong enough…if it was a big one."

"You can do that?"

"No. And I can't do a perfect Moko Takabisha either. I don't even know if there is a perfect form, being a different type of ki and all."

"They're related?" It was more of a statement than a question, but it was designed to encourage Ranma to keep talking. At the very least, he might find out enough information to be able to counter these techniques if fem-boy ever decided to use one on him in the future.

Ranma looked up at him guardedly. "Yeah. They work much the same way. I created the Moko Takabisha from the Shishi Hokodan, since it's more suitable for me to use."

Not a very informative answer, Tarou thought. He remembered back to what Ranma had said about the Shishi Hokodan, when he'd first explained what it was; he'd said something about Ryouga being upset. "It's based on emotion, isn't it?" Ranma's look of surprise answered the question for him. "Anger?"

"Depression."

"And yours?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow enquiringly.

"Confidence."

"Confidence?" Tarou let out an amused chuckle. "I always knew your ego had to be useful for something." He tipped out his bucket of soapy water, and fetched clean water to rinse his clothes.

"C'mon, what about you?" Ranma said impatiently. "Ki attacks?"

"No," Tarou shrugged. "I've never needed them. My powerful technique _was_ my cursed form. Other than that, I use straight hand to hand and I use this." He tapped his forehead for emphasis.

"That didn't help much yesterday."

"I don't know. I _did_ give him a sprained ankle without laying a finger on him," Tarou said, smirking. "Which is better than you ever managed one on one with me, I might add."

"A sprained ankle?" Ranma snorted incredulously. He burst out laughing.

Tarou felt a familiar, unpleasant flush of warmth across his face. Indignantly, he crossed his arms and attempted to scowl at Ranma – who had progressed to rolling around in the water clutching his sides – but for some unknown reason, against his will, the corners of his mouth kept twitching upwards. Perhaps it was a trivial thing for a martial artist of his calibre to be proud of; it certainly sounded silly, if you didn't know that he'd been dealing with a huge, nearly unstoppable monster.

"Okay, so it wasn't _that_ impressive," Tarou mumbled awkwardly. "I was improvising."

"Hey, I'm impressed!" Ranma exclaimed, still grinning. "So, how'd you do it?"

"I kept dodging in the same direction, fast. That body is very top heavy, and hooves can't get a good grip on slippery ground. If you turn too fast, you go down. Hard. Twist a leg the wrong way with that much weight on top of it, and it can break."

"You tried to break his leg?" Ranma asked, frowning slightly.

Tarou nodded indifferently.

"That might explain why he flew away afterwards," Ranma added.

Tarou stood up and slung his wet clothes over his shoulder. "Something that I did notice," he added. "He's fighting the same way that he did before. No flying, no tentacles, no ink. No idea why."

Ranma appeared to consider this for a while and then shrugged. He climbed out of the hot spring and looked up the darkening sky. "I'm done soaking. I'm gonna go start a fire. There's still leftover curry from this morning. That okay for you?"

---

He was alone, but that was as it should be. He couldn't remember how long he had been out here, all alone in the dark. Was it three nights? Five nights? A week? He couldn't remember. It seemed like forever.

He had killed. Or had he? The person had attacked him… the one who used to be this thing… Pantyhose Tarou. He'd attacked first, but then he'd just lain there. Still. Where was Ranma? He couldn't see Ranma. What had Tarou done to Ranma? Ranma should have been there, but he wasn't.

Now he was alone again. And he could only remember.

The curve of her beautiful cheek. Her arms around him, making him feel warm and safe.

Never again. He was alone.

He couldn't remember ever being this hungry. He had eaten, two nights ago, but now it seemed like forever. The ache inside him, gnawing at him, eating away at him. He was feeling dizzy… weakened, and he couldn't think straight.

He had to leave, find something to eat. He couldn't just stay here, his mind curling it on itself, screaming, drowning in its own anguish. He had to leave. Had to keep going.

Alone.

* * *

Revision History: Spelling / grammar changes mostly. I reworked the final conversation in the hot spring a little because I thought it was unlikely that Tarou and Ranma would swap their techniques quite so readily. Also, reworked a few scenes to try and make them more emotive. 


	4. Chapter 4: Into the Abyss

Disclaimer: I don't own and didn't create Ranma ½ or any of these characters.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Into the Abyss **

Ranma opened his eyes slowly, shielding them against the glare of the blazing campfire. He sat up and looked around. It was still early in the morning, not long after dawn, he guessed. The other bedroll was empty and he couldn't see Tarou anywhere. The Chinese boy had obviously been awake for long enough to have rekindled the fire before he'd left.

Ranma strolled away from the campsite and stretched, enjoying the chill of the morning air against his skin after the warmth of the fire. He had wanted to continue on after Ryouga as early as possible and had initially been annoyed that Pantyhose Tarou had gone missing, but after spending the last five days alone with him, he was relieved to have some time to himself.

Ranma continued walking until he was out of sight of the campsite, picking his way carefully through the long grass so that the early morning dew would not trigger his piglet curse. He might not have liked turning into a girl, but he had been almost as comfortable in that body as he was in his own and at least he could change himself back and defend himself. He had allowed himself to become complacent about his curse, as he had proven when he had forgotten to pack an umbrella for himself. Thankfully, the last couple of days had been clear, but he didn't want to think about what would happen if the rain started again; somehow he doubted that Tarou could be persuaded to give up his cloak.

He arrived at a small clearing. The sunlight streaming through the break in the trees had dried the grass already, so he wouldn't have to worry about his curse while he trained.

He started with a basic kata, progressing to more difficult and intricate ones as he limbered up, thinking all the while about the upcoming fight with Ryouga. He knew he should be concentrating on how to get the lost boy back without hurting him, but he couldn't deny that part of him _wanted_ the fight. Partly because he hadn't had many chances to fight a strong opponent as of late – and there were few things he enjoyed more than a really challenging fight – but most of all, he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it, because Tarou could not.

He had noted the Chinese boy's interest in the Moko Takabisha and Shishi Hokodan the previous day. Somehow he had managed to piece together the underlying principle of the moves quickly enough, although Ranma doubted that he had enough of an understanding to actually duplicate the techniques yet. Not that _he_ couldn't have mastered the moves with that amount of information, Ranma thought to himself with a smirk. He had duplicated the Shishi Hokodan with less, and it wasn't even a technique that was suited to him.

He finished the kata he had been doing, and moved back to the centre of the clearing, idly wishing he had a training dummy that he could practice with. It was time to find out whether there was a perfect form of the Moko Takabisha. He clenched his fists tightly and focused.

"Moko Takabisha!!" he yelled, straining to push his focused ki upwards in the same manner that he had seen Ryouga do many times. A yellow glow emanated upwards and then settled, but it was nothing like the massive pillar of light that Ryouga could generate. He refocused and tried again. The same thing happened.

Repeatedly he refocused his confidence and ki, and every time the result was nothing more than that faint yellow glow. With each failure, the glow became fainter, and eventually he could not even generate that. His hands fell to his sides despondently. That was the problem with a technique that relied on confidence; if it failed, the resultant loss in confidence would make it weaker again. He couldn't tell if the Perfect Moko Takabisha was failing because there was no such move, or because he simply wasn't as confident as Ryouga was depressed. He suspected it was the former. His light confident ki wouldn't gather together and crash back to earth in the same way as Ryouga's heavy depressive ki. The old ghoul could have told him, if only he'd thought to ask her.

Ranma focused his feelings of failure, crossing his wrists tightly across his chest.

"Shishi Hokodan!" he shouted, holding out his arms with the palms cupped outwards. A large red ball of light and ki blasted forward from his hands and flew forwards for several feet before dissipating.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, pumping a fist in the air and grinning. Damn, he needed to stop doing that! That feeling of elation he always had when he successfully completed a Shishi Hokodan would damage his chances of successfully pulling off another one. In any case, perhaps he should practice the standard form first, to see if he had any better luck with it than last time.

He crossed his wrists again and tried to think of the most depressing thoughts he could. Being a pig? No, not good enough. Being beaten… losing his strength… losing Akane to somebody stronger than him… Akane… a doll's eyes closing, never to open again… he had failed her…

"SHISHI HOKODAN!!!"

The reddish sphere was huge compared to his previous efforts with the Shishi Hokodan, but was still far smaller than the majority of Ryouga's. There was no way he was going to get depressed enough to be able to complete a Perfect Shishi Hokodan.

Ranma flopped to the ground dejectedly. His best efforts and he couldn't produce a perfect form of either attack. He could do multiple variations on the Hiryuu Shoten Ha, had come up with combat uses for the Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken training, could use people's strengths against them and could improvise a suitable attack for about any opening he was given, but he couldn't create a perfect form of a lousy emotion-based ki attack. It was infuriating.

He heard a chuckle from behind him. He turned around to see Tarou, casually leaning up against a tree with a smirk on his face.

"Great," Ranma muttered, climbing to his feet. "How long have you been there?"

"Long enough. They were the famous Shishi Hokodan and Moko Takabisha, were they?" Tarou said dryly.

"You think you can do better?" Ranma scoffed, privately hoping that the other boy couldn't. He couldn't face the thought of being shown up after his failed practice session.

Tarou shrugged indifferently.

"Where did you disappear off to, anyway?"

"Hunting."

Ranma's mouth watered at the prospect of fresh meat instead of just plain rice for breakfast. "Catch anything?"

"A piglet." Tarou chuckled. "A bit larger than your cursed form. It's cooking now." He turned and started to walk away.

Ranma idly watched the retreating boy's back for several moments. "Wanna spar?" he asked.

Tarou turned around, eyeing him doubtfully. "Spar?"

"You know… pretend fighting." Ranma explained slowly. "As in no splashing each other with water, no trying to kill each other."

"I know what it means," Tarou said impatiently. "I was just… surprised. Okay."

As Tarou approached, Ranma could see the dark circles under his eyes. "You look like you had a rough night. Bad dreams again, huh?"

"None of your business," Tarou muttered grimly, lowering into his standard combat stance.

"Fine. Be that way." Ranma grumbled.

Ranma raised his own fists and stood observing his opponent for several moments. He had made the offer to spar on the spur of the moment. His father had appeared to lose interest in their regular sparring sessions after Ranma had proven to be stronger than him, and in any case, Ranma had not been in any hurry to risk being caught in another 'Cradle from Hell'. The only other possible alternative was Akane. No doubt she would have jumped at the chance, but her abilities were so far beneath him to not be worth his while. Tarou, on the other hand, had proven to be very close to him in skill and should be a good challenge, particularly now that he no longer had his far more dangerous cursed form to fall back on if things went nasty.

Ranma rushed forward and aimed a series of jabs at Tarou, testing his reaction. As expected, the Chinese boy wove around them effortlessly, his previously dark expression having given way to one of calm self-confidence. Ranma grinned, and attacked again more seriously with a series of rapid kicks and punches. Tarou dodged most of the blows and caught the rest on his right bracer, moving backwards at an incredible pace. Ranma frowned, puzzled. It was obvious that he was being led somewhere, but why? He risked a quick glance over Tarou's shoulder, to see if he could see anything unusual behind him. The moment his eyes left his opponent's, a fist impacted his shoulder and then his side. He looked back in time to see Tarou dropping, as if to sweep his legs out from under him. Ranma jumped clear of the outstretched foot, tagging the other boy with a kick to the back of his head as he landed. He stepped back a few paces, then attacked again.

Ranma soon found that he was enjoying himself. Tarou was maddeningly difficult to hit, darting around like a dragonfly all the while wearing that irritating, self-satisfied smirk on his face, but once Ranma had begun to concentrate more on his opponent's tactics rather than his technique, he had managed to get a couple of good hits in. He had received a few as well; the one near his left kidney still ached, although he knew that Tarou had not put his full power behind his elbow when he'd done it. Still, it was a lot more satisfying than sparring with his father.

The two martial artists flitted back and forth across the clearing, dodging and exchanging blows, gradually increasing the speed and power of their blows in an attempt to gain the upper hand. Eventually, Tarou dropped to a standstill.

"What? You done already?" Ranma scoffed.

"Breakfast will be ready," Tarou said. "You want to eat, don't you?" He turned and began to walk back towards the campsite. "I hope that wasn't the butt-kicking I was promised," he tossed over his shoulder, smirking.

"Why you little-" Ranma growled, as he hurried to catch up with the other boy. His mouth was already starting to salivate. "I _was_ still holding back, you know," he added smugly.

"So was I. Wasn't that the point?"

Ranma gave a disbelieving snort and, having caught up with the other boy, settled down at a walking pace beside him. Naturally, he'd have beaten the wimp, had he been trying. He might be skilled and fast – and downright sneaky – but nobody beat Ranma Saotome.

---

Ranma stood on the lip the crater, surveying it grimly. The smell of freshly turned soil still hung in the air thirty six hours after the huge ball of ki had punched the hole in the earth. It measured approximately thirty feet across which, while certainly not the biggest he'd seen, still ranked quite high on the Ryouga Depress-O-Meter.

There was no sign of Ryouga himself, but he had left tracks scattered everywhere. Tarou was off poking around in the dirt trying to locate the latest ones, but if the frequent bouts of what sounded like cursing in Chinese were any indication, he wasn't having much luck. The tracks weren't hard to make out, but there were so many of them, criss-crossing, heading in random directions and then circling back onto themselves. Since Ranma's own experience with tracking was practically nonexistent, he'd been happy to leave the task of deciphering them to Tarou. To his surprise, he'd even managed to mostly ignore the way that the Chinese boy had preened, revelling in finding yet another thing that he was better than Ranma at. Ranma didn't care about tracking, and, consequently, didn't care that he might not be the best at it. But, if there had been a sport called Martial Arts Ryouga Tracking, there was no way Tarou would have been better at it than him.

Surrounding the crater, the forest was dark and dense, preventing Ranma from getting a good look at the nearby countryside. He jumped up into a nearby tall tree and clambered up high into its branches. The ridge they were on continued northwards for about half a day's journey, ending in a tall rocky outcrop. To the northwest lay a village, about two hours walk away. He hopped back out of the tree, landing lightly beside Tarou.

"I'm guessin' you didn't find anything," Ranma said.

"Of course I did." Tarou flicked his bangs away from his eyes with a hand, his lips curled into a self-confident little smirk. "He left heading west… eventually. Sometime yesterday."

"There's a village over there," Ranma said, pointing. "We'll be there by lunchtime if we leave now. I wanna check in with Nabiki. You got any problems with that?"

Tarou shrugged. "Someone at the village might have seen something last night anyway. And if they haven't, the tracks will still be here." He hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders. "Do you have any money? Food supplies are running low."

"A little. Should have enough, I guess." Ranma pulled on his backpack. "What would you have done?" he asked. "If I hadn't had any money, I mean."

"What would _I_ have done?" Tarou snorted. "It was your idea to come along, remember? I can take care of myself."

Ranma gave a snort and headed off in the direction of the village, Tarou following close behind him.

---

The village was tiny, consisting of only one convenience store and a handful of houses. Ranma padded his way up the main street, Tarou following, making his way to the noisy throng of people and cars he could see at the far end.

He heard footsteps approaching rapidly and side-stepped smartly, just managing to avoid two children who came barrelling out of a side street. They circled around, giggling and shrieking, the one being chased evidently trying to hide behind Ranma and Tarou. It was then that Ranma noticed what the child doing the chasing had in his hands.

"Hey, watch ou-"

He heard a growl from behind him, and turned around to see a damp, female Pantyhose Tarou, levelling a vicious glare at the child. The little boy hid the water pistol behind his back and grinned.

"Oops," he giggled, bowing. "Sorry, lady."

Both children then set off again at a sprint, one chasing the other. Deprived of his target, Tarou then turned his scowl upon Ranma, who grinned back at him.

"Spring of Drowned Girl, my butt." Ranma laughed. "Spring of Drowned Water Magnet, more like! Things like that used to happen to me all the time."

Tarou continued to glare at him, unimpressed.

"C'mon, then. The sooner we finish this, the sooner you can get some hot water."

"You think I'm going to let anybody see me like this?"

"Nobody's gonna know you here," Ranma said, rolling his eyes. He grinned, adding, "Besides, I told you before… you make a cute girl. Comes in handy sometimes. Now, c'mon!"

Ranma grabbed the growling Tarou by the shoulder and resumed walking towards the cluster of people. Or at least, that's what he had intended to do. The Chinese boy had planted his feet to the ground like a stubborn child.

"You think you can make me?" he smirked.

"Fine. Stay here, then." Ranma released the other boy's shoulder and turned to walk off. "Coward," he muttered, loud enough that Tarou couldn't help but hear.

"What did you say, fem-boy?" The smirk had twisted into a sneer.

"You heard me." As Ranma turned to walk off again, he added over his shoulder, "I just think it's funny that someone who wears pantyhose around their waist is scared to be seen in public as a girl."

If Tarou gave any response, Ranma didn't hear it. He wasn't surprised, though, when he heard the Chinese boy's footsteps start up behind him. He listened for long enough to confirm that Tarou was following him, and then turned his attention back to the crowd in front of him.

As he neared them, he could make out at least one camera crew and some reporters surrounded by onlookers. He managed to make out the word 'monster' from the general hubbub, repeated several times with apprehension. His heart began to pound in his chest with a combination of excitement and dread. Had they seen Ryouga… or was it worse? He grabbed the nearest person by the arm and hauled them aside.

"What's that about a monster? Have you seen him?" he asked urgently.

The man shook his head and pointed over into the crowd. Ranma could make out several people moving towards him. One of them, a young man in his early twenties, stepped forward.

"You were asking about the monster?" the man asked. "This one?" The man held up a glossy colour image. The quality was too poor for it to be a photo, but Ranma guessed it might have come from one of those newfangled digital cameras. It was dark and grainy, but in the middle of the image he could clearly make out a large hunched shape with a bovine head, wings, and tentacles.

"Ryouga," he muttered under his breath. Aloud he added, "You took this? When? Where?"

"Last night. It broke into Yoshi's vegetable garden. Decimated the lot."

"Yoshi?"

"My neighbour. He's away, so I've been keeping an eye on the place. Lucky, huh?"

"Yeah, lucky," Ranma said with total sincerity. "Did you see where he went?"

"Well, he went that way," the man said, pointing, "but there were some weird lights over the other way later on." He turned around and pointed in a different direction; towards the cluster of rocks Ranma had see that morning from the tree.

"Lights?" he asked, trying to keep the excitement from his voice.

"Yeah, lights." the man repeated. He pulled out a second image. It was much darker than the first, nearly black, except for a vertical column of reddish light reaching up into the sky. "And there was another one this morning, just before dawn. Are you monster hunters?"

"Somethin' like that," Ranma grinned. "We've been tracking him for almost a week."

Ranma excused himself and peered around, trying to locate Tarou. He found him a small distance from the crowd, leaning against a wall wearing a carefully cultivated look of disdain on his face.

"We've got 'im!" Ranma exclaimed, pumping a fist in the air. "He was over by those rocks this morning."

"Good. Let's go."

"Wait. Supplies first, remember? I'm gonna go call home. You wanna go shopping now or wait for me?"

"I can manage by myself."

Ranma dug his wallet out of his backpack and handed a wad of cash to Tarou, and then headed off towards the public phone further up the street.

The conversation was short. Nabiki hadn't come up with anything new, but no doubt she would still expect payment. He told her about the Shishi Hokodan, in case there were more reports of lights in the sky. He had then spent the rest of the time talking to Akane; their conversation was stilted and awkward, and he still couldn't admit how much he missed her, but he did feel better for hearing her voice.

Ranma hung the phone up with a click. He didn't need to turn around to know that Tarou had already returned, and was pacing back and forth behind him like a caged tiger.

"You're back," he said. "Cheerful as ever, I see."

Tarou handed over the change stiffly, and then began to stuff the groceries into his backpack, muttering something unpleasant sounding under his breath.

"What happened?"

Tarou clenched his fists, his face flushed with anger. "The shopkeeper… that pervert! He kept staring at me… at my chest."

"Used to happen to me all the time!" Ranma burst out laughing. "You should've batted your eyelashes or somethin'. He might've have given you a discount!"

Tarou growled and whacked the other boy over the head.

"Hey, it worked for me!" Ranma said, grinning. "My body must've been sexier."

"I can see why you'd want your curse back," the Chinese boy sneered.

"It's not like I enjoyed havin' guys stare at me and grab at me and askin' me out on dates and stuff! But if some guys are stupid enough then why shouldn't I take advantage of 'em? It's no different from you using the strength from your cursed body or your wings to fly."

Tarou shot him a look of disgust. "It isn't?"

"No, it isn't!" Ranma said emphatically, although he was no longer sure of who he was trying to convince.

Tarou looked pointedly over Ranma's shoulder, indicating he'd seen someone. Ranma turned to see three people approaching rapidly – a pretty young woman in a business suit, a cameraman and another man holding a large microphone on a boom. The rest of the crowd was following closely behind.

"Good afternoon. I'm Kyoko Suzuki. I'm a reporter for the Channel 12 News. Are you the two martial artists that were asking about the monster over in Kiruma two days ago?"

"I dunno the name of the place but I guess that's us," Ranma replied warily.

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions?"

"Sure," he shrugged. He stepped back so he was next to Tarou. The other boy appeared calm and unruffled, if you didn't notice the way his eyes kept flicking back to the camera and microphone, that is.

"What are your names?"

"Ranma Saotome of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts," Ranma announced proudly. He didn't need to look at Tarou to know that any pretence of calm had gone; he could feel the tension radiating from him.

"And you, miss?" Kyoko asked.

"None of your damn business," came the muttered reply.

"Oh!" Kyoko exclaimed, shocked.

A broad grin spread across Ranma's face. He knew he shouldn't do what he was about to do, but he couldn't help it; that huge sore spot in the other boy's psyche was just so tempting. "Oh, she's just shy. Her name is Pan-"

An arm blurred up and locked itself around his throat, cutting off his air supply. Ranma's first impulse was to fight back – he could break out of the choke hold easily enough – but did he really want to be caught on camera beating up what appeared to be a pretty girl? There'd be the hassle of trying to explain that Tarou wasn't really a girl, and then he'd have the whole Jusenkyou thing to explain, and… no, thanks. And he was at least partly to blame for his current predicament. He swivelled around and locked eyes with Tarou, smiling, trying to indicate that it was all a joke. Tarou's piercing glare made it obvious that Ranma wasn't about to get out of this that easily, so he tried again.

"-ko," Ranma managed to spit out. The arm around his neck loosened slightly. "My cousin Panko," he elaborated, remembering how Akane had introduced him when his mother had first come to visit. The arm shifted away from him completely. "Distant cousin. Barely related, in fact," he added, something like a smile beginning to return to his face. He glanced at the camera. "Is that thing on?"

"Yes. We can start again if you like?"

"Prob'ly a good idea."

Kyoko turned to the camera and addressed it. "And now we will meet the two brave martial artists who have elected to defeat this monster, Ranma Saotome of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts, and his cousin Panko." She turned back to Ranma. "So, Ranma, what made you decide to go after this terrible beast?"

"Um… because fighting monsters is a sacred part of a martial artists duty," Ranma exclaimed proudly.

"That sounds very dangerous," Kyoko purred.

"Yes, very dangerous. Of course, it's nothin' we can't handle though." he grinned.

"They say that the beast's name is Ryouga. Is that true?"

Ranma's face fell.

"You talk too much, fem-boy," Tarou muttered quietly. "Stop posing so we can get out of here."

"Actually, we need to get going," Ranma said to Kyoko. "Can't let the monster get away, can we?"

"And do you have anything you want to add, Panko?" Kyoko asked, turning to Tarou.

Tarou glowered at her and then the camera, and then turned on his heel and marched off, Ranma following close behind.

When they were a safe distance from the crowd, the Chinese boy spun around to face him. "Why?" he snarled. "Why did you do it?"

"Do what?" the pigtailed boy asked innocently.

"Told them my name!"

Ranma chuckled and clapped the other boy on the back with the palm of his hand. "I never said nothin' and you know it!"

Tarou gave a disbelieving snort and resumed walking. "You were going to tell them," he said bitterly.

Ranma felt a momentary twinge of guilt but ignored it. He hadn't really done anything wrong. He'd changed his mind in time, and that's what counted. "I didn't know you were camera shy, Panko," he said, smirking.

"What shy?"

"Camera… you know, that big thing on that guy's shoulder?" Ranma explained.

"Oh." A faint flush began to appear across the Chinese boy's cheeks.

"You don't know what a camera is?" Ranma asked incredulously.

"I know what they are," Tarou snapped. "I've never seen one like that… only little ones. The Chinese wilderness isn't exactly littered with them."

Ranma hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders and watched as Tarou did the same. "C'mon, let's get out of here."

---

The two boys started off at a run as soon as they'd left the village, and, except for a brief kettle stop for Tarou (and Ranma's sanity, since the other boy obviously wasn't going to quit complaining until he had been changed back), didn't slow down until they had reached the rocky outcrop. Up close, it appeared much larger than expected, approximately three hundred feet high and five hundred across its base. They searched around for a while, Ranma periodically calling out Ryouga's name, but finding no sign of him other than the occasional hoof print.

By late afternoon, rain clouds had gathered thickly in the sky and the temperature had begun to drop. The two boys stopped their search and pitched the tent, barely finishing before the rain started to fall.

Ranma sat on his bedroll, fidgeting as he listened to the steady rhythm of the rain beating down on the tent. It was frustrating; there was at least one more hour of daylight left, but he couldn't go outside in the rain. He turned to Tarou, who was sitting cross legged in the far corner of the tent with his eyes closed. He'd been like that ever since the rain had started. In fact, he'd been unsociable the entire afternoon, ever since they'd visited the village. He couldn't _still_ be moping about that name thing, could he?

"Why aren't you out there?" Ranma asked. "I thought you wanted to get your curse back?"

"I do." Tarou opened his eyes, and gazed at Ranma coolly. "Listen. That body has very good hearing, and you've been out there shouting. If he was nearby, he'd have heard you." He gave a derisive snort. "Assuming he's still alive, that is."

"What? He was okay this morning."

"He's eaten twice that we know of, and not much either time. You have no idea how much a creature that size needs to eat to stay alive, do you? If that's all he's had, I'm guessing we have another day or two before it's too late. The good thing is, the less he eats the more he weakens, and that increases our chances of catching him."

"What?!" Ranma exclaimed indignantly. "That's pretty heartless, even for you."

"I'm just being realistic."

Realistic? No, he had to just saying that to make Ranma feel bad. He'd be worried, otherwise. Worried he wouldn't get his curse back. "And what'll you do? If he does die? You don't want to be stuck with that girl curse forever, do you?"

"Of course not. If that happens, then I'll head back to China, to Jusenkyou, get myself re-cursed." He smiled. "You never know, I might decide on the Spring of Drowned Ashura this time around. Or maybe find something stronger." Tarou paused, the hint of a sneer crossing his features. "Why? Are you worried about him?"

"Of course I am! He's… my friend, and I'm not just gonna let him die! Not like that!"

"How touching."

Ranma sat and observed the other boy for a moment. The Chinese boy's face was twisted into that irritating, triumphant little smirk which was obviously meant to convey just how _superior_ he was. Ranma felt a powerful, spiteful urge to wipe it away. "Don't you care about anyone except yourself?" he asked quietly.

Tarou's expression grew dark, and his fists clenched tightly, knuckles whitening.

"That's it, isn't it?" Ranma continued, his voice hardening. "You don't care who gets hurt, as long as _you_ get what _you_ want."

"Why should I care?" Tarou snarled, muscles now rigid with tension. "It's not like any-" he began roughly, before cutting himself off abruptly. "Just shut up, fem-boy! You don't know anything about me!"

"Stop calling me names, damnit! I've been tryin' to be nice to you!"

"When?! You mean when you were going to tell all those people my name? And those times you keep calling me…?" Tarou trailed off, for a moment looking uncharacteristically lost.

"Don't call you what?" Ranma smiled, feigning innocence. "Pantyhose Tarou?"

"Don't call me that!"

"Don't call you what, Pantyhose Tarou?"

"Don't call me by my name!!" Tarou snarled, his face reddening with rage.

"And what name would that be?" Ranma resisted the urge to laugh out loud. This was _so_ much fun!

The Chinese boy rushed forward and seized Ranma by the collar, hauling him so close that their noses were almost touching.

"Don't call me…" Tarou growled forcefully, each word clear and precise.

"Go on, say it," Ranma taunted. "Say it. It's your name. I don't think I've ever heard you say it." He grinned nastily. "My name's Ranma Saotome. Why don't you tell me what _yours_ is?"

The grin faded as he saw the stricken look flash briefly across the other boy's face. It then switched back to rage, and he released Ranma's shirt and jumped to his feet. Ranma sprang up and landed in a defensive stance, expecting a fight, but the other boy merely shoved past him roughly and ran out of the tent into the rain.

---

No! There was no chance in hell he was going to let fem-boy see him cry! No way he was going to cry! No way he was going to let himself turn into that frightened, pathetic little boy he used to be. Why was he feeling like this? He didn't feel _strong_ anymore. He had become weak in mind as well as body. And those words the ex-crossdressing freak had said had actually hurt instead of just enraging him, just like they used to, many years ago; when he was a sad, lost, lonely, weak little child.

He curled himself up against the rocks, his knees huddled against his chest, and angrily swiped at the single tear that had dared to run down his cheek.

It was the Name. That's what it all came back to. People laughed at him for the Name, hated him for the Name. Even on the rare occasions they pretended to be nice to him, the Name would come up eventually, and they would taunt him with it. It was like a hidden dagger; even when it was out of sight he knew it was still there, and it would only be a matter of time before they stabbed him with it. And so he'd had to hide the Name, hide himself, toughen himself up so the dagger wouldn't sting so much when it cut him.

Over the last several days, he'd become careless and allowed that shield to drop. He was losing his self control. He had lost his powerful cursed body, a body he'd had his whole life. He had become raw, exposed and vulnerable.

What did he care what fem-boy thought of him anyway? He didn't even like the jerk! They'd been thrown together, most unwillingly. What did it matter that it was the longest he'd ever spent alone with someone – someone who knew his name, knew who he was – since he'd left his village? What did it matter that, on the rare occasions that fem-boy actually kept that mouth of his shut, he'd found himself almost enjoying the fact that he wasn't alone?

What did any of it matter?

Drip.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the rock behind him, trying to clear his thoughts. He couldn't keep letting his emotions run away like this; he had to regain some semblance of control before he made a complete fool of himself. He took a deep breath and then let it flow out of him. And then another, and another.

Drop.

He became aware of the raindrops trickling down his face, cold water running down his arms. It felt strangely pleasant, that cool drip and tickle as the water ran over human skin; the thick, shaggy fur of his other body had kept out all but the heaviest rain. He held out his hand, palm upwards, to catch the water, the same way he had used to do as a child. It had been almost like a game to see how many drops he could catch without triggering his curse, the only thing he could do when he was stuck inside on those long rainy days.

_Drip. _

_"Get away from there! Are you trying to change inside and wreck this house the way you did Meiying's?" _

_"No." _

_He snatched his hand back from the doorway and wiped it dry on his pants, and then looked up at the woman standing over him. She wasn't his mother – she had died two years earlier – but he was living with her family for the time being. This was the seventh family he had lived with since his mother's accident. For some reason, no one seemed to like having him around for very long. _

_He turned back around and peered through the doorway into the rain. He hated the rain. It kept him stuck indoors and it kept him from doing his chores in the pig-pen and the fields. He didn't like doing them, but people left him alone if he kept busy and, if he did a good enough job, then maybe – just maybe – someone would like him enough to take care of him and not send him away again. _

_He could see his Sifu training out in the rain and wished he could go to him. Sifu was nice to him. He had wanted to be allowed to live with Sifu, but he had said he was too old to look after young children. He still visited every day he could for training, though. He was already much faster and stronger than the other children and he loved martial arts; it seemed to be the one thing he was good at. Someday he was going to be powerful, stronger than anyone in the village, stronger even than Sifu. Perhaps one day, he could even be stronger than those beautiful warrior women he had seen training in the fields nearby, their weapons arcing through the air like lightning bolts, their breastplates and colourful silks gleaming in the sunlight. _

_There was a childish shriek as two young boys ran past the door, one pursuing the other. The pursuer caught up with the other and wrestled him to the ground, where they both rolled around in the mud, giggling. Tarou shrank back away from the doorway, out of sight. It didn't matter that they were younger than him; they still knew his name and knew how to torment him. While in the village, he couldn't even use his monster body to frighten them into leaving him alone; he would have to accept their taunts in silence, feeling every word tear at him inside until there was nothing left. He hated them. Hated them for what they could do to him, and hated that he could not do anything to prevent them. _

_"Pantyhose Tarou," the woman called. _

_Peals of laughter rang out from the two young boys outside. _

_Tarou turned to her stiffly, struggling to keep the rage from showing on his face. She looked down at him disapprovingly – how could she not, when he was cursed with a name like his? How could she show him anything other than pity and revulsion? _

_"Come and help me make lunch." _

_Silently, he made his way over to the table, where she handed him a knife and some vegetables. He sat down and began to slice the green onions. _

_"Such a sullen little boy," he heard her mutter. _

_He didn't answer. What was he supposed to say? How could he make her feel any differently about him? He continued chopping in silence. _

---

Ranma sat by the tent's entrance, arms wrapped around his knees, and stared blankly out at the rain. The stupid, oversensitive fool, running off again, just like he had the day before.

No, not like the day before. Then, he had been angry, but now…

He couldn't even say that it had been an accident this time. He'd deliberately lashed out at the other boy's weak spot, and he couldn't deny that he'd felt a certain amount of grim pleasure in doing it. Just like he had earlier at the village, when he was going to tell Kyoko and the villagers Tarou's name. He'd only stopped because hedidn't want to look like a bully beating up a girl, not out of pity. He'd never stopped to think that perhaps the Chinese boy's name wasn't just the annoyance that he'd assumed it was, when all along, the poor jerk couldn't even bring himself to say it.

That stupid, overemotional idiot…

The sun was setting; it had to have been at least half an hour since he'd left. Ranma had expected him to return within a few minutes, like he had before. Maybe he wasn't coming back. Maybe he'd left for good, and was heading back to China like he had wanted to. Back to Jusenkyou. No, he hadn't even taken his cloak – he wouldn't leave without that, surely.

Perhaps he should go out and look for Tarou. Maybe… maybe even try to apologise, or something. Maybe then, if the other boy did decide to go back to Jusenkyou, he might be persuaded take Ranma with him. Ranma filled the kettle and placed it on the gas stove so it could heat up while he searched, wrapped Tarou's cloak snugly around himself, and headed out into the rain.

Ranma found the Chinese boy sitting at the base of the cliff with his back against the rocks. His head was bowed against his chest, his hair plastered thickly against his head with the rain, and he held a slender, feminine arm outstretched as if catching the raindrops. As Ranma approached, he raised his head and gave a sort of grim smile, his lips pressed tightly together.

"Here you are," Ranma said with forced cheer. "Finished… whatever it was you were doin'?"

Tarou emptied the water out of his outstretched hand and unsuccessfully tried to wipe it dry on his sodden pants.

"I've put the kettle on," Ranma continued. "D'you want some tea? Or hot water?"

Tarou nodded slowly.

"C'mon then."

Ranma turned and started to walk off in the direction he had come, Tarou following silently behind him.

Inside the tent, Ranma tossed the cloak aside and began to rummage through his backpack. Tarou sat down by the kettle crosslegged and touched a hand to its side. Ranma sat opposite him, twisting a pair of black pants and a white singlet about in his hands as he studied the other boy. His expression was one of faint boredom, but looking closer, Ranma could see how haggard he looked.

"You didn't have to run off like that. It ain't like I've never seen you cry before."

"I wasn't!" Tarou snapped indignantly.

"Sure you weren't," Ranma smirked. "Here." He tossed the clothes towards the other boy.

"What are these for?"

"They're for you… you know, to wear," Ranma said. "If I gotta look at you, you can at least be dressed."

Tarou laid Ranma's clothes aside and started to tug off his own.

"Look, Tarou… can I call you Tarou?"

The Chinese boy's hands froze in the middle of untying his vest. Eventually, he nodded.

Ranma stared absentmindedly at the back of his hand, trying to think of a way of phrasing what he was about to say. He'd always hated apologising; it made him feel like a naughty little boy. "I shouldna done that thing with the name this morning," he eventually managed to spit out. "And I prob'ly shouldna said that stuff earlier. And… I won't anymore, okay?"

Immediately, Tarou opened his mouth to respond, his lips twisting into a derisive sneer, but then closed it again without making a sound. His hands dropped to his sides limply and he turned and stared off into the distance, his expression unreadable.

"Why are you being nice to me?" Tarou whispered.

There was that question, again. He'd asked the same question the first time he'd visited, back after they'd convinced Happousai to change his name. And at other times, even if he hadn't asked the actual question, there was that same sheer disbelief.

"Why? I don't like bein' hated. And I just wanna work together and find Ryouga." Ranma paused, waiting for a response, but there was none. "I used to keep doing the name thing 'cause you kept calling me fem-boy and bein' a jerk and stuff, and 'cause it made you angry," he explained further. "I didn't realise… but I don't mean to hurt nobody. Not even you."

Tarou bowed his head against his chest, his face hidden in the shadows of his thick black bangs. Ranma leaned forward and laid a hand on the other boy's arm, hoping that he wasn't about to burst into tears or anything embarrassing like that.

"Tarou?"

Tarou jerked his head up and met Ranma's gaze. His eyes were dry but he did appear to be feeling rather moved.

"The kettle's hot."

Tarou nodded and quickly stripped himself off, changed himself back, and then dressed himself in the clothes Ranma had given him earlier.

"You think you could stop calling me fem-boy, now?" Ranma said hopefully.

Tarou shrugged indifferently, but there was a hint of a smile on his lips. "At least until you get your curse back. It doesn't suit as well at the moment, anyway."

---

Tarou awoke with a start, his heart pounding in his chest. He was sitting bolt upright, clutching desperately at his left shoulder, trying to ease the throbbing dream pain although it was already receding. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to shed the after images of his dream. Another nightmare. The same one he had been having for several days. A memory, and not one he was prepared to deal with yet; not one he'd ever wanted to deal with.

_… running blindly through the darkness, half out of his mind with pain and shame… _

He pushed aside the thought and looked around intently, as if he could drown out the dream images with real-life ones. Through the open tent flap, he could see the muted, almost blue-tinged light which indicated it was just before dawn. Beside him, Ranma was sprawled most of the way off his bedroll, snoring loudly, looking and sounding uncannily like a younger – but skinnier – version of his father.

Tarou crawled down to the end of his bedroll, where his clothes, still soggy from the previous evening's rain, lay bundled up on the ground. He picked through them until he found his leather pouch, still hidden in the folds of his sash. He opened it and checked the contents, glad that the rain hadn't damaged anything. The incense sticks were the most important items in there – other than his mother's earring, of course. Mentally, he congratulated himself that he'd thought to move them from the cardboard tube that they'd originally been in to a waterproof tin. He fastened the pouch back up and slipped it into his backpack, tucking it well out of sight at the bottom. It would be more secure there than in his sash, and he didn't want to risk fem-boy finding it and guessing the purpose for the incense before he had a chance to use it on him.

Tentatively, he poked a head out of the tent. Everything was still damp, but it had obviously stopped raining early in the night. The sky was completely clear; a deep indigo dotted with a handful of rapidly fading stars.

He stepped outside and stretched the kinks out of his neck, and then set out through the trees looking for firewood. He drifted along silently, avoiding the wet grass and low hanging branches with an ease and grace that came from many years of practice, pausing every so often to pick up a suitable lump of wood and add it to the growing bundle tucked under his arm. He hadn't expected to find a stream this high up in the mountains, but he did locate a small waterhole nestled in a natural hollow only a short distance from the campsite. The water was clear and tasted fresh enough to drink, so he made a mental note of its location and headed back to the camp.

Working quietly so as not to accidentally wake Ranma, he grabbed the cooking equipment, the kettle, a knife, a box of waterproof matches, and the food supplies from the backpacks.

Most of the timber he had collected was still damp, so he selected a suitable piece and, using the knife, deftly whittled away the wet outer layer. He then shaved off a number of small curls of the dry inner wood, which he gathered in a pile on the ground. He struck a match and touched it to the pile; the shavings caught fire quickly, and by blowing gently and adding some tiny twigs, and then adding progressively larger pieces of wood, he managed to coax the tiny flames to life. Satisfied that the fire wouldn't go out, Tarou tossed on several more pieces of wood, and then wandered off to fill the kettle.

Tarou knelt down by the waterhole and dipped the empty kettle into the water, careful not to disturb the mud at the bottom. He sat for a moment, mesmerised by the ripples that drifted across the water, glinting silver in the early morning sunlight. Two small birds flitted past and landed on the opposite side of the waterhole. They weren't frightened by his closeness; he had long ago mastered the art of being able to fade his presence into the background when he wanted to. It was the way he had survived so many years on his own.

He stood up in a single fluid motion and headed back through the trees towards the camp, shielding his eyes from the long fingers of light peeking through the trees. He still enjoyed his early mornings alone, although, inexplicably, Ranma's company wasn't bothering him as much as it had previously. The first night – the one he had spent at the Tendou Dojo – he had confidently predicted that he'd have strangled the pigtailed boy in his sleep by now, but instead, even if they didn't actually like each other, they did seem to be getting along much better than he had thought possible.

Tarou settled down crosslegged by the fire and began to chop the leftover roast pork into the cooking pot, letting his mind wander as his fingers went through the familiar motions automatically. He was curious about the moves that Ranma had been practicing – or at least, attempting to practice, he thought to himself with a chuckle – the previous morning. Now that he had deduced the underlying principles of the move and seen a demonstration, he no longer considered the non-perfect variety to be much of a threat; the range was too small and the stance a dead giveaway, giving him ample time to back out of reach. On the other hand, it should be a simple enough technique to duplicate, if he could find an emotion which suited him better than fem-boy's ego or pig-boy's depression. He had never been particularly interested in flashy ki techniques, preferring to rely on either his formidable hand-to-hand skill or the power of his cursed form. His cursed body, however, as much a part of him as his human body, was – for the present, at least – no longer an option. He needed to find a replacement weapon to add to his arsenal, and if a flashy ki technique was what was available, then that's what he'd learn.

He discarded the now meatless pig bones, then added some dried vegetables, water, soy sauce and several pinches of suitable smelling spices to the cooking pot. Then, he hung the cooking pot over the fire, and went off to find a suitable area for his usual morning practice while breakfast was cooking.

---

_He couldn't smell them yet, but their thin, yowling voices tore through him. These weren't foxes – just another predator to be feared – these were infinitely worse. Cats. Even as a human, the mere thought of them horrified him, but now, as a piglet, the fear had been magnified a thousandfold. _

_They were approaching. He didn't turn to look. He couldn't bear to see all those piercing, slitted eyes, glowing unnaturally green, staring at him. _

_He ran. Sprinted through the undergrowth as fast as he could, sheer primal terror coursing through every fibre of his body. They were gaining on him. He tried not to imagine the weight of their bodies upon him, the feel of their claws in his flesh; tried not to think about those hundreds of little needle teeth, reeking of fish, biting into him. A fresh wave of fear flooded through him, and then another as he realised that his piglet body was fleeing purely on instinct, and that he had no more chance of controlling it than if he'd been a flea on its back. _

_Suddenly, he was human again and standing face to face with Ryouga. The cats were clustered around them in a large circle, the nearest ones sitting several metres away, and somehow, Ranma knew that Ryouga was the one keeping them away from him. _

_"Ryouga! You gotta help me!" he cried. "Get 'em away from me!" _

_The lost boy simply looked at him, his large brown eyes filled with regret. _

_"C'mon, man! Please? I'm gonna go crazy!" Ranma pleaded, not caring how desperate he sounded. He could feel the Nekoken clawing at the edges of his psyche, trying to take over. _

_"You were too late to help me," Ryouga replied darkly. _

_"What are you talking about, idiot?! Help me!!" _

_"It's too late. You took too long, Ranma. I can't help you anymore." _

_The lost boy cast one last, almost apologetic, look at Ranma and then vanished into thin air, leaving the pigtailed boy alone with the cats. In one smooth movement they pounced, piling on top of him, their dreadful cries drowning out his screams. _

Ranma opened his eyes, relief flooding through him as he recognised his surroundings. His heart was racing; pounding in his chest like it was trying to break out through his ribcage. He sat up and took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. He wasn't in the forest, being attacked by what seemed like thousands of cats. He was here, in the tent, and he was safe.

"What a weird dream!" he muttered, rubbing at his sweaty face with his hand. He felt uneasy, as though he were still being hunted.

_"…you were too late…" _

What had _that_ been about? Too late for what? Was Ryouga angry with him… is that why he wouldn't help? And why the tremendous feeling of sorrow from the lost boy?

He was interrupted in his thoughts by the sound of the tent flap being pushed aside. He looked up to see Tarou peering in at him curiously.

"You're finally awake," the Chinese boy remarked. "Hungry?"

"Yeah."

Unusually for him, he wasn't, but he knew he would be later if he didn't force something down. He followed the other boy to the campfire, where he was handed a bowl of meat, vegetables and rice. Ranma picked at it half-heartedly at first, his eating gradually gaining momentum as the knot of unease in his stomach melted away.

"You look terrible," Tarou said brightly.

Just great, Ranma thought. He'd only been awake for two minutes and he'd already been insulted – that _had_ to be a record, even for Tarou. So much for hoping that being nicer to the jerk might encourage him to act less unpleasantly in return.

"You ain't exactly gonna win a beauty contest yourself."

"You were making enough noise in there," the Chinese boy said. "Bad dream?"

"Yeah, kind of. Did I…. say anything?"

"You were screaming," Tarou offered. "Does that count?"

"Was not!" Ranma snapped. He folded his arms across his chest indignantly.

"And you were calling out pig-boy's name," Tarou added, smirking. He poked around in his bowl with his chopsticks, absentmindedly. "Maybe it wasn't screaming I heard, after all."

"That's right!" Ranma growled. Ranma Saotome didn't scream like some sissy girl over a bunch of stupid cats. At least he hadn't been yelling about cats in his sleep – he hated to think how much mileage Tarou would get out of his phobia. He decided that it was safer to change the subject; the Chinese boy had an irritating knack for figuring things out with very little information.

"What've you got to be so cheerful about, anyway?"

"No particular reason. I did find something you might be interested in, though."

"Yeah, what?"

Tarou chuckled. "I'll show you. Hurry up and finish eating."

Tarou quickly emptied his bowl, grabbed some things from around the campfire and then disappeared into the tent. Ranma was happy to ignore him and finish eating in peace.

After breakfast, Tarou led them out to the rocks, to the side furthest away from the campsite.

"So," Tarou said grandly, a broad smirk plastered across his face, "what do you see?" He gestured expansively with a sweep of his arm.

Ranma gazed around him. The rocks loomed up into the sky above him, and the ground around him was smooth, level and free of trees. He frowned. The jerk couldn't just tell him what he had found like a normal person, could he?

"I dunno," Ranma replied irritably. "Why don't you tell me what I'm s'posed to see?"

"What's the matter?" Tarou smiled. "You can't figure it out on your own?"

"Y'know Tarou, I think I like you better when you're in a bad mood," Ranma said.

"You're no fun." The Chinese boy gave a dismissive snort, then pointed at the ground at his feet. "Here. See the tracks?"

Ranma squinted down at where Tarou had indicated; it was only faint, but he could make out a depression in the shape of a large cloven hoof.

"A hoof mark?" Ranma grumbled. "We saw a heap yesterday, remember? What's so special about this one?"

"Look in front of it."

Ranma did. A couple of steps to the side and in front of the first track, he found another, sunk slightly deeper into the ground than the first.

"Yeah, there's another one. He's walking."

"And in front of that one?"

Ranma folded his arms across his chest indignantly and scowled at the Chinese boy. He didn't like to feel stupid and he didn't like to feel talked down to, and right now Tarou was doing a great job of both. Eventually he walked forward and examined the ground in front of the second track.

"I don't see anything," he said, puzzled.

"That's because there aren't any more," Tarou explained slowly. "He's taking off." He demonstrated by stepping forward twice, putting more weight on the front foot.

"Oh yeah." Ranma wandered around, scouring the ground for more tracks. Tarou couldn't have been so excited about this one set of tracks. There had to be something he was missing, and he was damned if he was going to ask about it unless he had to. "Here's another set!" he exclaimed brightly, pointing out a second set of tracks in the dirt.

"That's right," Tarou said. "And there's a third one over there."

Three sets of hoof marks, all taking off in the same direction. Ranma peered up into the sky, then at the rocks. "He's flying up to the top?" he muttered. "No, wait." He looked closer, focusing on a dark shadowy patch about two thirds of the way up the rocks. "Is that a cave?"

"Bingo!"

"But how do you know if he's still up there?"

"I don't, but I have found only two sets of tracks where he's landed. That could be because he flew further the third time, or I could have missed them, or it could be because he hasn't come down yet. We won't know unless we go up there."

"Ah! That's why you've got my torch tucked in your pants, then?"

Tarou grinned. "He does have a brain!"

"Hey!" Ranma exclaimed, as he lobbed a handy pebble at the Chinese boy's head. Tarou dodged it, sniggering loudly.

"I'm assuming you know how to climb?" Tarou smirked.

Ranma popped his knuckles and grinned. "Of course."

Naturally, Ranma wasn't about to let Tarou show him up at something physical, so he took a flying leap at the cliff face and landed nimbly on a small ledge about thirty feet up. There was another ledge higher up, which he sprang up to and caught the edge of with his fingers. With a grunt of effort, he pulled himself up and hooked his feet onto the ledge, then stood up, trying to work out his next move. There weren't any more overhanging ledges nearby, so he tucked his fingertips into small cracks between the rocks and began to climb.

Progress was slow. The rocks were weak and crumbly and more than one handhold had broken  
away under Ranma's hands. In the end, he kicked off his shoes, so that he could get a better grip with his toes, Martial Arts Tea Ceremony style.

"Watch it, you idiot!"

Ranma felt a small rock hit him on the back of his thigh. He looked down to see Tarou scowling up at him, and below him, his discarded shoes fluttering down towards the ground.

"Who are you calling an idiot?" he called down. He tossed a pebble down towards the other boy for emphasis.

Ranma heard Tarou mutter something under his breath but could not make out the words. He grinned to himself and continued climbing. To his surprise, he found that he was enjoying himself. It wasn't in his nature to think too much about a problem – unless it was combat related, and even then he preferred to just wing it – so he particularly liked anything he could tackle using his body alone. On top of that, it seemed they were finally catching up with Ryouga. Hopefully, Tarou's predictions from the previous evening regarding the lost boy's health had been an exaggeration, designed to upset him or make him feel guilty – Ranma wouldn't put it past him.

Eventually, he neared the cave entrance. He hooked his fingers over the edge and heaved himself up, barely missing landing in a puddle of water, left over from the previous night's rain. He drew himself upright and grinned down triumphantly at the Chinese boy, still about ten feet below him.

"Hurry up, slowpoke!" he called down the cliff.

He chuckled to himself, ignoring the irritated look he'd just been given.

Before long, Tarou had reached the cave entrance. Ranma stood on the edge with his arms folded across his chest, looking down as one hand gripped the edge, then the other.

"Now, where've I seen this before?"

Tarou froze, his eyes narrowed.

"C'mon," Ranma said, grinning. He knelt down by the edge and extended a hand. "Watch the water when you come up."

Tarou gave the hand a pointed look, and then, almost hesitantly, took it in his and hauled himself over the edge, carefully placing only his fingertips in the puddle. He then climbed to his feet and approached the cave entrance, tugging the torch free from his sash as he did so. Ranma stood beside him and peered into the darkness, catching only glimpses of the cave interior as the light from the torch danced around.

"How 'bout you give me that?" he said, indicating the torch. "I can't see a thing the way you're waving it about."

Grudgingly, Tarou handed the torch over. Ranma, lighting the way, began to head into the cave.

The floor sloped upwards for a short distance and then fell away again. The air was heavy, dank and stale, like some long forgotten tomb. Here and there, Ranma could see hoof prints and the occasional enormous handprint pressed into the earthen floor. Their progress was eerily quiet, the soft padding sounds of Ranma's bare feet and Tarou's slippered ones barely disturbing the silence.

Eventually, the tunnel opened out into a massive cavern, stretching out into the darkness beneath them. Ranma shone the torch over the edge of the cliff, but the beam wasn't strong enough to penetrate to the bottom.

"What do we do now?" Ranma said despondently. "Ryouga!" he called. There was no response. "Ryouga!!" He felt a tingle of fear on the back of his neck. "Maybe he's not in here."

"Maybe we're too late," the Chinese boy replied grimly. "Maybe he's dead."

_"… you were too late…"_ echoed the voice from his dream.

Ranma felt a flush of rage from within. "No!" Ranma shouted. "He's not dead and he's my friend and I'm gonna find him, even if I have to do it myself!"

Tarou chuckled.

"Shut up, you!" he growled. He stepped right up onto the overhanging lip and the edge of the cliff, and leaned over, trying to find a way down.

"Watch it! The rock-" he heard Tarou say from behind him.

He wasn't sure what happened next. The lip of rock seemed to tilt and crumble beneath him. The torch slipped from his fingers, spinning away into the darkness. He felt fingers scrape past his arm, trying to grab hold of him, but they had missed. He could hear Tarou shouting something at him, but he couldn't make out the words over the roar of the rocks. His stomach gave a sickening lurch as he went into a freefall.

His eyes were opened wide, but all he could see was an expanse of black. He felt strangely calm, and his only real regret was that he would never see Akane again. His last thought, before his world exploded in pain and blackness, was a hope that Tarou would go back to the dojo and explain what had happened; at least that way, she wouldn't need to spend the rest of her life worrying about him.

---

The cry awoke him from his slumber. Somebody was in trouble… they needed him. He couldn't remember the direction of the cry, but luckily, this beast form's hearing was good enough that he could hear the person falling through the air. He rushed towards them, ignoring the dizziness that threatened to make him pass out again, letting every protective instinct in his body take over. He made it just in time, cupping his great hands under the falling figure just before they hit the ground.

He heard another shout from high up on the cliff face. He was fairly sure the second person was male, although it was one of those voices that made it hard to tell.

The person in his hand wasn't moving. He could smell blood, but he could also make out a heartbeat when he lowered an ear to the person's chest. This person was definitely a male, and he was alive, but unconscious. He needed to be taken to a doctor.

Ryouga mustered all of his available strength and took off, flapping his tiny wings as fast as he could. He turned all of his attention to the second figure on the cliff, quickly homing in on their position using his hearing. As gently as he could, he picked up the second person in his free hand, wishing he had a way of reassuring them that he wouldn't hurt them. They hadn't needed rescuing, but the last thing he wanted was for them to panic when he came past and run blindly off the cliff.

He tucked himself into the tunnel and began to walk. There wasn't much room, so he had to hunch over, laying his tentacles flat against his back so that he didn't scrape their tender flesh on the rocks above. He ignored the way his head was throbbing, and he ignored the waves of nausea he felt rising. He wondered why he felt nauseous; it wasn't like he had eaten anything to throw up anyway.

As he walked, Ryouga turned his attention to the second person, who he could now feel was also male, curious why he hadn't screamed or struggled. Not only that, the person was speaking to him calmly, saying something about campsites and hot water nearby. In fact, now that he thought about it, the person's voice did sound familiar.

Finally, he reached the cave entrance. He squinted his eyes against the glare, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the daylight and for the black spots to stop dancing around in front of his eyes. Gingerly, he opened his eyes, and looked at the people in his hands.

In his left hand was Ranma; he was unconscious. In his right, Pantyhose Tarou, most definitely conscious and addressing him in that typical haughty manner of his. Ryouga decided to ignore him for the time being, at least until he got onto the ground. His mind was reeling with questions, but unfortunately it was also just reeling and it was all he could do to stay on his feet.

He jumped off the cliff, concentrating on keeping his wings flapping. He hit the ground hard – too hard – relying on his martial arts training to roll to the side properly and keep the people in his hands safe. He struggled up to his feet again, and then placed Tarou on the ground. The Chinese boy was speaking again, more urgently this time, pointing back towards the rocks. Ryouga tried to listen, but the pounding in his head seemed to fill his whole world and he couldn't make out the words. He couldn't remember ever feeling this tired; he just needed to rest for a while, and then everything would be alright. He laid Ranma down gently and then, slowly, collapsed forward onto the ground beside him.

* * *

Revision History: Fixed characterisation issues in the village, and then later for the Ranma and Tarou's argument, and Ranma's later apology.

Glossary:

Sifu - Chinese equivalent of Sensei.


	5. Chapter 5: Convalescence

Disclaimer: I don't own and didn't create Ranma ½ or any of these characters.

* * *

**Chapter Five: Convalescence**

Falling. He could remember falling through the dark.

His head was an explosion of agony. It was all he could feel, all that he was; a supernova of pain threatening to bust out through his skull. He focused on his breathing, on feeling the pain ebbing and flowing with every breath, trying to will it away.

His eyes flickered open. Sky. It was daylight. He let his head roll to one side. He was by a campfire, on the grass. A figure walked past him, carrying a second over its shoulder. The figure laid the other down on the grass, and then walked off out of sight again.

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He allowed his eyes to close, and drifted back into that world of pain.

Falling.

Jumbles of images floated past. Places, faces. He could only watch them, not think or feel. A pretty girl with short black hair and kind eyes. A fish jumping out of a pond. A panda landing on a bamboo pole, high above the water. A red umbrella flying through the air. His memories, fragmented.

Throbbing.

Someone was touching him, their hands soft and gentle on his head. They were dabbing at the side of his head with something warm and wet. It stung a little, but the pain was nothing compared to that inside his head.

"… hurts…" he managed to gasp out.

"I'm not surprised," came the reply.

It wasn't a kind voice, but the hands were, so he didn't mind. Whatever they were doing didn't help the pain much, but he was grateful for the attention. The pain seemed to be fading on its own, anyway.

He opened his eyes and found himself looking up at a face. It was a little out of focus, but it was a pretty face with short black hair.

"Akane…?" he murmured.

He could see that it wasn't, now that he looked harder. The eyes were wrong, but the shape of the face was similar.

"No… pretty like 'kane…"

The eyes narrowed slightly, but the hands didn't stop their dabbing and wiping. He smiled and closed his eyes, happy to let whoever it was look after him for a while.

* * *

Blood on his hands. Ranma's blood. Hell, _that_ didn't surprise him. He'd always expected that one day he'd have fem-boy's blood on his hands, but not like this…

The last person who'd called him pretty, he'd had that person's blood on his hands, too.

_"Do you want to make a few yuan, pretty boy?" _

_The man's lascivious grin deepened when he saw the predatory gleam in Tarou's eyes, obviously mistaking it for something else. _

_"Oh, really? You'd like some of this, would you?" _

_The man ran his fingers through his greasy hair and nodded, his eyes glazed with lust. Tarou cracked his knuckles and stepped forward slowly, almost languidly, all the while chuckling to himself quietly. _

_It was over in just a few moments. The man's nose shattered under his knuckles with a satisfying crunch, followed by his jaw, and then both his arms. And as for the rest of him, there were some parts he wouldn't be able to make use of for a long time, no matter how many pretty boys came along. _

_Tarou had no intention of killing him; it was far more of a punishment to let him live with the pain. Far more of a punishment to make him explain his injuries to his wife; in Tarou's experience, despite their tastes for pretty little boys, most of these men had wives and children of their own. _

Tarou opened his hands again and examined the drying, copper streaks. Blood on his hands, but not from hurting someone. From helping them.

It hadn't worked, last time.

A child's voice sobbing. _"Please, wake up!" _Tiny hands caked with blood. _"Don't leave me!" _

No. Don't think about that.

Tarou washed the last of Ranma's blood from his hands with a stream of warm water from the kettle, and then wiped them dry on his pants. He hadn't hit fem-boy. To his surprise, he hadn't even felt a need to. Ranma had been barely conscious when he'd said it and probably hadn't even recognised him. And hitting him might have made his injuries worse. The pig-tailed boy's skull appeared to be more or less the right shape, but he couldn't tell any more than that.

Still, he had to give Ranma some credit – but only grudgingly, he reminded himself. The boy was tough and a fast healer. A couple of hours of rest and he'd be back to his usual annoying self.

The other boy was less of a problem. For some reason, the idiot had allowed himself to become starved and dehydrated. Stupid, lazy city dweller! It was easy to catch food in that body, and there was water everywhere. The fool obviously had no idea how to survive in the wilderness. That big pack he carried around must be for show.

Tarou unfastened the water bottle from his sash and knelt down by the lost boy. He'd need some water and something to eat if he was going to recover.

"Hey, porkchop." Tarou slapped the sleeping boy lightly on the cheeks. "Wake up."

Ryouga began to stir. Tarou slapped him a few extra times for good measure, and then sat back on his heels. The other boy's eyes flickered open. He blinked groggily several times, trying to focus on the Chinese boy. He tried to speak, but nothing came out other than a hoarse whisper.

"Good. Now drink this." Tarou opened the water bottle and held it out.

Ryouga ran a tongue over his cracked lips, and then grasped the bottle with an unsteady hand. Tarou kept his own fingers wrapped around the bottle to prevent it from spilling, and then cupped his other hand under the lost boy's neck to help him sit up. He was far weaker than Tarou had thought; he must have used up the very last of his strength bringing them from the cavern.

Ryouga took a tentative sip of the water, and then drained it in several gulps, his lips pressed to the bottle as though his life depended on it. Despite the boy's weakened condition, Tarou had to wrestle the bottle from his fingers to get it back from him. Ryouga hiccupped, and then suddenly turned away and vomited the water back onto the ground.

"Lovely," Tarou said, wrinkling his nose. "It's not going to do you any good if you don't keep it down."

Looking shamefaced, Ryouga wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Tarou sighed and went to fetch the second water bottle. This time, he unscrewed the lid and tipped most of it onto the ground before offering it to the other boy. Obviously, his stomach would only be able to take a small amount at a time.

He pried Ryouga's fingers off the empty water bottle and screwed the lid back onto it. By the time he had returned from refilling the bottles, the lost boy should be ready for some more.

"What about something to eat?" he asked.

Ryouga nodded slowly.

No doubt ex-pig-boy would throw up any solid food he was given. He'd need something light to start with, something easy to digest. Tarou remembered the packets of instant miso soup he'd seen amongst the food supplies. Yes, he thought to himself with a smile, they should be suitable.

He started to rise to his feet, and then stopped when he saw that the lost boy was trying to say something. His voice was raspy and hard to understand, and Tarou eventually managed to make out the words.

"Thank you."

Tarou blinked, surprised at the unaccustomed flush of warmth that those words had brought to his face. "Not a problem," he replied awkwardly.

Without another word, he grabbed the kettle and both water bottles, and marched off through the trees towards the waterhole.

* * *

When Ranma opened his eyes again, the sun was sitting low in the sky and the pain in his head had lessened to be no worse than a severe headache. He raised his hand to his head, gingerly feeling around the sore spot on the left side of his head; there was a large bump and the skin had been split, but it didn't seem too serious. He worked himself onto his side and looked over to the motionless figure lying on the other side of the campfire.

Ryouga. They'd found Ryouga, but when? They'd been looking for him, and then... he'd fallen… and he couldn't remember. He sat up slowly, trying to avoid any sudden moves with his throbbing head, and then crawled over to the lost boy's side.

Ryouga was lying wrapped in a blanket, asleep or unconscious – Ranma couldn't tell which – and his face was gaunt and pale. Without his bandanna to keep them in place, his thick, dark bangs hung low over his eyes; Ranma gently brushed them aside with his fingertips. At the light touch, the lost boy groaned softly and murmured something under his breath, one of his pointy canines protruding slightly from his lips. Ranma smiled and laid a hand on Ryouga's shoulder, happy to see that he was safe.

"Good to see you're not planning on lying around _all_ day."

Ranma turned his head to see Tarou approaching, kettle in hand and a large smirk plastered across his face.

The Chinese boy moved the cooking pot from the campfire and placed it on the ground nearby, where it sat, steaming fragrantly. He poured some water into a pot full of uncooked rice, and then hung both it and the kettle over the fire.

"I guess you found Ryouga," Ranma remarked, as he sat down beside Tarou. "Where was he? In that cave?"

"He found you, actually. He caught you after you fell."

"Fell? That's right. The cliff broke." Ranma brushed his fingers over the bump on his head. "What happened? Why does my head hurt?"

Tarou gave a contemptuous snort. "He thought I'd done it. Hit you over the head and thrown you off. You must have hit your head on the way down, otherwise he'd have known it wasn't me."

"And that was you touching my head earlier?"

"I was washing the blood off so I could see whether you'd broken your fool head open." Tarou gave a chuckle. "You haven't, so it looks like I'm stuck with you for at least a little while longer."

"Oh," Ranma said, nonplussed. "Thanks… I think." He gestured at the sleeping lost boy with a thumb. "So he's gonna be okay then?"

"He needs food and water. He might take a couple of days to get back to full strength, but he should be fine."

"I don't understand," Ranma said. "He knows how to survive, does it all the time."

Tarou shrugged, apparently unconcerned. "By the way, it's watering time again. Since you're awake, it's your turn."

"Huh?"

"He needs water, remember?" Tarou said, rolling his eyes. "Give him some. The bottle's over there." He pointed towards Ryouga.

Ranma moved over to the lost boy and knelt down beside him. He rummaged around for the water bottle, and soon found it nearby, lying beside an empty bowl that still contained drying shreds of seaweed.

"Oh, and make sure you wake him up first."

"Just how stupid do you think I am?" Ranma shot an angry glare at the grinning Tarou, and then turned his attention back to the sleeping figure beside him.

"Hey, Ryouga." He gave the other boy's shoulder a gentle shake. "Wake up."

Ryouga peered up at him groggily through half-closed eyes that were sunken deep into shadowed sockets. "Ranma," he whispered in a ragged voice, "you're awake."

"Hey, that's my line!" Ranma grinned. "How are you feelin'?"

"Tired. Thirsty." Ryouga sat up carefully, his blanket sliding down his bare chest to his waist. "What about you?"

He handed the water bottle to Ryouga. "You know me. Takes more than a bump on the head to keep me down."

"That's because there's nothing in there to get injured," Tarou quipped.

Ranma rolled his eyes, but otherwise ignored the Chinese boy. His head was hurting too much to want to get into an argument now. "Looks like Tarou's already given you somethin' to eat, at least."

Ryouga took a large swig from the bottle and then nodded. "Yeah. Instant soup, I think." He stared off into the distance, his expression troubled. "You came after me," he added in a quiet voice.

"Course I did. We're pals, right?"

"We are?"

Ranma nodded and then, sensing that it wasn't quite enough, gave the lost boy a reassuring pat on the shoulder for good measure.

"I thought I'd have to stay like that forever. I thought I'd never..."

Ryouga's large, brown eyes filled with tears. He hid his face in the crook of his arm and began to weep. Ranma watched in awkward silence, unsure of what to say or do, just like he always did when someone cried. Unable to think of anything better to do, he reached around and tentatively patted the other boy on the back.

Ryouga peered up at him, his eyes reddened and watery, and sniffed loudly. "What happened? Why did I turn into… that thing?"

Ranma opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a flood of cold water streaming over his head, triggering his curse. He looked up to see Tarou standing over him and grinning, water bottle in one hand and a steaming kettle in the other. Ryouga was glaring at the Chinese boy with barely concealed distaste.

"Bweee!!"

"I'm sure you can guess what happens to me," Tarou said to Ryouga. He then poured a stream of hot water over Ranma's head.

"Hey!" Ranma sprang to his feet, and immediately regretted it. He waited for the pounding in his head to pass. "What'd you do that for?" he growled.

"I would've thought that was obvious," Tarou replied dryly.

"I could've just explained it to him!"

"I prefer the practical approach."

Ranma glanced at the empty water bottle in the other boy's hands, and then down at the one Ryouga had drained earlier. "I bet there's no more cold water around here either, is there?"

"Nope," Tarou said, no longer bothering to hide his amusement.

"Why you sneaky little-" Ranma growled. Every time! Every damn time he started thinking that the Chinese boy maybe wasn't so bad, he'd go and do something like this again. He dropped back onto the ground beside Ryouga and started to tug his damp clothes back on.

Ryouga flicked his eyes back and forth between Ranma and Tarou, bewildered. "So we all swapped? How?"

"You tell me," Tarou said flatly. "It was _your_ water." He knelt down beside Ryouga and gave a menacing smile. "The question is how do I get my body back?"

Ryouga blinked, confused. "I don't know. I don't know what happened."

Tarou gave a derisive snort and leaned in closer toward the lost boy. "What do-"

"Jeez, Tarou, not now!" Ranma snapped. He placed a hand firmly on Tarou's chest and tried to angle himself between the Chinese boy and Ryouga. "At least wait till he's feeling better."

The Chinese boy looked down disapprovingly at Ranma's hand and then locked eyes with the pig-tailed boy, his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed tightly together in an insincere smile, and then stalked off back to the campfire.

"He's a jerk," Ranma muttered, lowering his voice so that only Ryouga could hear. "Not as bad as he used to be, but he's still a jerk."

Ryouga paused, his brows furrowed. "Does Akane know?"

"Yeah, she's met him."

Ryouga rolled his eyes. "No. About the curses? About P-Chan?"

"Nah," Ranma grinned. "She thinks we're out training together."

"Really?" Ryouga frowned slightly. "You lied to Akane."

Ranma slapped a palm to his face and sighed. The idiot couldn't have just been grateful that he'd kept his secret, could he? "Damnit Ryouga! What was I s'posed to say?"

"I don't kn-"

"Are you two hungry?" the Chinese boy called from the campfire.

Ranma's irritation vanished as quickly as it had come at the prospect of food. "Yeah, I'm starvin'!" he called back brightly.

"I'm still pretty hungry, too," Ryouga agreed.

Ranma clambered to his feet and began to head towards the campfire, where Tarou was scooping rice into bowls. As he approached, the Chinese boy glanced up.

"You want to find some clothes for him?" Tarou said. He nodded stiffly in Ryouga's direction.

Ranma peered over his shoulder. Ryouga had managed to work his way to his feet and was swaying back and forth unsteadily, clasping his blanket around his waist with one hand.

"Oh yeah, in here."

Ranma grabbed the lost boy by the arm and led him into the tent, where he quickly dug out a pair of pants and a shirt from his backpack. He was glad that he'd thought to bring so many changes of clothes; between the clothes he'd lost when he'd been turned into a pig, the ones he'd lent to the others, and the ones that were too filthy even for him to wear, he was nearly out.

"You need a hand or anythin'?" he asked, handing the clothes to Ryouga.

"I can dress myself, Ranma."

Ranma shrugged and headed back outside. He eagerly accepted a bowl containing some rice and leftover pork and vegetables from that morning, and some chopsticks from Tarou. Ranma sniffed appreciatively and took a large bite. The Chinese boy wasn't a Kasumi level chef, of course, but the food was much better on this trip than it had been on previous ones when it was his father – or Akane, he thought with a groan – cooking.

Ryouga soon emerged from the tent, wearing the black pants and green Chinese style shirt that Ranma had given him. With his recent weight loss, the shirt hung loosely around his usually broader frame. He knelt down beside Ranma and picked up the third bowl of food and a pair of chopsticks.

"What is this?" he asked, peering curiously into the bowl. He sniffed it tentatively.

"Pork and vegetables," Tarou replied.

"P-pork?"

"What's the matter? You don't eat pork?" Tarou casually popped a piece of meat into his mouth and then smirked unpleasantly at Ryouga.

Ryouga looked down into his bowl again, a faint blush spreading across his cheeks. "Well, I… don't…" He cleared his throat and fixed Tarou with a steady gaze. "Sure, I eat pork. Why wouldn't I?" He picked up a piece of pork in his chopsticks and gave it a stern look, as if daring it to contradict him, and then hesitantly placed it in his mouth. "You eat beef, right?"

"Of course. Beef, eel, octopus, birds… all good."

Ranma scraped the last grains of rice clinging to his bowl into his mouth and then helped himself to another serving. "What about yeti?"

"Never seen a yeti."

As he ate, Ranma watched Ryouga out of the corner of his eye. He could see the lost boy was only picking at his food, although Ranma guessed that was because he was squeamish about eating pork, despite his protests to the contrary. He did wonder briefly about the lost, desolate expression in the other boy's eyes, but then decided that was probably caused by his recent illness.

* * *

Ranma blinked his eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the dark. Idly, he wondered what time it was, but then quickly decided that it didn't matter. Time had no meaning out here in the mountains; you travelled when it was light, slept when it wasn't and ate whenever you were hungry, just like he had all those years with his father. No timetables and no limitations. It was refreshing.

He lay still for a while, not sure whether it was worth trying to get back to sleep or not. To his left, he heard Ryouga whimper in his sleep and roll over. Ranma waited until he had settled back down and then silently crawled to the tent entrance. Perhaps if he went outside and stretched his legs for a while he might feel more like sleeping.

The moon shone down full and bright, bathing the land in a silvery light. Surprisingly, the fire was still going strong. Ranma knelt down by it and prodded the coals with a stick, watching the flames dance in their twisting, hypnotic rhythm.

He caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to see Tarou, clad in only his white pants, performing a kata off in the distance. The Chinese boy flitted back and forth like a ghost, gleaming white in the moonlight, throwing punches and kicks that were almost too fast for Ranma to follow. Ranma watched in rapt attention, comparing the moves to his own, the same way he had used to watch his father practice as a small boy. Back then, Genma had moved with a raw, savage power that had seemed almost god-like to his young eyes; and now… he saw images of Genma drinking sake, playing shogi with Soun, lolling around on the floor in his panda form… Ranma shook his head in disgust; at least he wouldn't end up like that.

Tarou whirled around as if he were being attacked from behind, and planted a series of punches aimed at the phantom enemy's nose, throat and sternum. Ranma continued to watch curiously. How often had the Chinese boy practiced like this? Every morning? And what about Ryouga? He had spoken of training in the mountains, numerous times. And what had he, Ranma, done lately? Some katas one morning, a sparring session, and a brief scuffle in the past week. And before that? He had used to spar with his father every morning, but then that had fizzled out and he started spending the mornings sleeping in rather than practice on his own. At the time he hadn't minded; he was getting more than enough training fighting the many mad martial artists that lived around or visited Nerima, but in the months following Saffron and the failed wedding, there had been less and less of them, too. Ranma shook his head again and chuckled to himself. He didn't know what he was worried about; the other two only needed to practice so much because they didn't have the raw talent that he possessed. He was still the best, wasn't he?

He watched as Tarou slowed his movements, eventually coming to a standstill. For a moment, the Chinese boy dropped his face into his hands, shoulders slumped, and then stood upright again and walked slowly back to towards the tent. He seemed to stiffen slightly as he noticed the other boy, but it was gone so quickly that Ranma was left wondering whether he'd imagined it. Without saying a word, he sat down a short distance from the fire, one knee drawn up against his chest, and stared into the flames.

"How come you're up?" Ranma asked.

Tarou turned his gaze upon Ranma. "How come _you're_ up?"

"I just woke up, I guess. Prob'ly spent too long asleep today." Ranma paused, waiting for the other boy to answer his question. After a while, he added, "What about you? Dreaming, again?"

"How did you-"

"You talk in your sleep, remember? It wakes me up sometimes."

Tarou looked mildly embarrassed.

"I think Ryouga was having a bad dream when I left. It wouldn't surprise me." Ranma gave a small chuckle. "I don't think he thought much of your curse."

"Good. He'll be happy to give it back then."

"At least we found him in time," the pig-tailed boy said, "and he's getting better. I don't understand what happened to him. It's like… I dunno… like he just gave up." Tarou looked at him blankly, although Ranma couldn't tell whether it was because he didn't care or didn't understand. "How did you know what was wrong with him? And what to do?"

"You think I've never been without food and water before?" the Chinese boy snorted. He paused, a distant look in his eyes, before continuing in a quiet voice, "When I first left, I didn't know how to look after myself. I could set some basic traps, and that was it. I had to teach myself everything." He rested his chin on his raised knee, and wrapped an arm around his leg, pulling it close against his chest. "I nearly starved to death that first winter."

"So why didn't you go back?"

"I…" Tarou wrapped his other arm around his leg. "It just wasn't an option, okay?" He dropped his arms to his sides and then sat up straight, gazing at Ranma calmly. "Anyway, that's how I knew what to do. I've seen it before."

"Lucky you did. I wasn't really in a position to do much at the time… what with hitting my head." Ranma rubbed at the spot on his head, and noticed the pain had all but gone. He guessed he had his rapid healing to thank for that rather than anything Tarou had done, but still, the Chinese boy had carried him back to the campsite and taken care of him, despite his earlier claims that he wouldn't. "It's funny. I never imagined you helping someone… helping me and him… doing all that healing stuff."

Tarou held out his hands, palms upwards, and examined them closely. "No." He clenched his fists briefly and then opened them again. "No, neither did I."

For a moment, he seemed about to say something else but nothing came. Instead, he went back to staring intently at his hands in the firelight. Ranma shuffled slightly closer, trying to see what it was that had the other boy so entranced, but couldn't see anything: no marks, no injuries, nothing. Tarou hadn't even appeared to notice him approaching; normally the Chinese boy was almost preternaturally aware of his surroundings.

"Tarou? What's goin' on? You're actin' kinda weird." Weirder than usual, Ranma corrected himself. The Chinese didn't normally answer questions about himself like that, either.

Tarou turned away stiffly and stared into the fire.

At least he hadn't been told to mind his own business. He cast about for an appropriate subject. "How old were you? When you left?"

"Twelve. Just a stupid little kid."

"What about your family?"

"What about them?"

"Didn't they… I dunno… miss you after you left?"

"I doubt it," Tarou answered grimly. "My mother's dead. I never knew my father."

Well done, Saotome, great choice of question. "Jeez, I'm sorry," he said out loud.

He looked up to see Tarou staring at him, his eyes cold and his face hard. "Why are you sorry? You didn't do it."

"What? You mean someone…?"

"No, it was an accident. A wild bear. I was six years old." The Chinese boy lowered his forehead onto his raised knee and began to speak softly, making it difficult for Ranma to catch the words. "She was out in the forest alone – I don't know why – looking for food perhaps. The bear attacked her. She managed to make it back to the village by nightfall… she had been bitten, scratched, bones broken… must've been hurt inside, too." He looked up, his eyes and earrings glittering golden in the firelight. "The elders said she was too badly hurt," he continued, his voice growing bitter. "They didn't want to _waste_ medicine on someone that would die anyway. She lasted most of the night. I was the only one who stayed up with her." He trailed off and he sat with his head bowed, the silence broken only by the sound of his breathing.

Ranma sat and listened in sympathetic silence. He could still remember how difficult it had been when he could only see his mother as Ranko rather than as her son due to his father's stupid seppuku promise. He couldn't imagine how it would have felt to have never been able to see her again, or to have sat by her while she died, unable to do anything to help.

"Is this somethin' to do with the dreams?"

"No. Sometimes. I…" Tarou's fists clenched and he chuckled darkly, his voice sounding barely human. "None of your business. What do you care anyway?"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked. He'd only been trying to help the jerk! Why couldn't he see that? "You're right. If you wanna sit up half the night sulking, that's none of my business I guess." He climbed to his feet and yawned loudly. "I'm getting tired. Goin' back to bed."

Ranma dusted his feet off at the tent entrance, then ducked inside and crawled back to his bedroll. He heard a faint snore from Ryouga on his left, indicating that the lost boy was still fast asleep. He cast one last look at the Chinese boy's hunched form silhouetted against the firelight, and then closed his eyes.

* * *

Tarou scooped up a bucketful of water from the waterhole and emptied it over his head, suppressing a shudder of disgust as his body deformed into its female form. He refilled the bucket and stepped away from the waterhole to prevent contaminating their water supply. He quickly soaped himself up from head to toe and rinsed off, and then ran his hands over his body to scrape off the excess water. Strangely, his female body no longer repulsed him as it had a week earlier. How soon would it be, he wondered, before the transformation itself no longer bothered him? Would he eventually stoop to flaunting his feminine charms to get something he wanted, the way he had seen Ranma do so many times? Mincing around like the grotesque parody of womanhood that he was, exposing his chest for the likes of the old lecher to fondle? He chased that thought away angrily, and switched his attention scrubbing the last couple of day's worth of accumulated sweat and grime out of his clothes. There was no way he'd end up like fem-boy!

Once done, he headed back to the camp, wet clothes slung over his shoulder and the bucket in his hand. The two other boys were sitting together by the fire, talking and eating. He felt a twinge of shame as he saw Ranma. He had spoken so openly last night. Too openly.

As he approached, Ranma gave a curt nod in greeting and then resumed shovelling down his breakfast. Ryouga glanced up and his eyes widened in horror. He clapped a hand over his nose and turned his head away, a livid blush spreading across his cheeks.

"You never got a nosebleed for me!" Ranma grinned.

Cautiously, Ryouga unpeeled his hand from his face and sighed heavily. There wasn't a trace of blood around his nose. "Just caught me by surprise," he muttered. "I'm okay now." He looked Tarou up and down slowly. "Haven't they heard of modesty in China?"

Tarou looked down at himself in bewilderment; comprehension finally dawned.

"How 'bout I put the kettle on?" Ranma said brightly. "Just in case Ryouga here changes his mind and starts to bleed to death."

"Ranma!"

After quickly hanging up his own clothes to dry, Tarou ducked inside the tent and tugged on the pants and singlet that Ranma had lent him previously. As much as he enjoyed tormenting the lost boy, he had enough of an idea about what a nosebleed meant to not want to provoke him into getting one. He then ducked back outside and seated himself by the fire opposite the other two boys. The water in the kettle was now hot enough, so he poured a generous splash over himself and then helped himself to some breakfast. The three boys ate in silence, totally devoid of the usual inane chatter that he'd come to expect from Ranma at mealtimes. For some reason, he found the silence oddly unsettling.

Tarou felt a yawn rising and stifled it with his hand. He was exhausted. That must be why he was reacting to things differently. He didn't need a lot of sleep normally, but the last week of broken sleep and nightmares must be starting to affect him.

He looked up to see Ranma peering up at him strangely from under his bangs. He opened his mouth to demand an explanation, but the pig-tailed boy had already looked away again. Instead, he turned his attention to Ryouga.

"So, pig-boy," Tarou said, "do you want to tell me where you got that water from yet?"

Ryouga glared up at him menacingly. "The name is Ryouga Hibiki." Ranma chuckled to himself quietly. "What's so funny?" the lost boy growled.

"Nothin'," Ranma grinned. Ryouga crossed his arms across his chest angrily. "C'mon, man," the pig-tailed boy said, giving his neighbour an enthusiastic nudge in the ribs with an elbow, "are you gonna tell us about the water?"

"I just don't want him to call me that." Ryouga scowled in Tarou's direction for a moment longer, and then unfolded his arms. "Fine. Like I said back at the dojo, I picked it up at a shrine in the mountains. The waters from the spring running under the shrine have been used for centuries, to cure illnesses and magic curses."

"So why didn't it cure us then?"

"He's bloody lucky it didn't!" Tarou muttered.

"I don't know!" Ryouga snapped. "He said I had to share the water with someone pure of body to get it to work. That's all he told me. I don't even know what that means!"

"And that's why you came to see me?" Ranma asked.

Tarou sniggered loudly at the thought of anyone being desperate enough to require the use of Ranma's brain; it was just like someone asking pig-boy for directions.

"I thought he might have meant…" Ryouga cupped a hand and whispered into Ranma's ear, a vivid blush spreading across his cheeks.

The pig-tailed boy looked confused. "What?"

"You know…" The lost boy whispered something else, his cheeks burning an even deeper crimson than before.

Ranma shook his head and whispered something in return.

"But what about…?" Ryouga rolled his eyes in Tarou's direction.

Ranma snorted incredulously. "Him? He can't even talk to a girl!" he whispered, although it was still loud enough for Tarou to hear.

"What are you two on about?" Tarou snapped. That last comment had hit a little too close to home for his liking.

Ranma grinned, but there was little humour in it. "What Ryouga is asking me is if you're a virgin."

"What's that got to do with anything?!" Tarou growled.

_("… such a pretty little thing…")_

No. Don't think about that.

He waved a hand dismissively at the pig-tailed boy. "Why not blame the guy with all the girls hanging off him?"

"Jealous, Tarou?"

"Of you? Feh!" Tarou sneered with as much contempt as he could muster. "What could I _possibly_ be jealous of you for?"

"I'm better lookin' than you, definitely sexier-"

"Never let it be said that Saotome lacks depth," Tarou quipped, smirking meaningfully in Ryouga's direction. To his surprise, he received a wry smile in response.

Ranma wrinkled his brow in confusion. "What? Hey!"

"So," Ryouga said, addressing Tarou, "you don't think the curse swapping has anything to do with whether or we've… you know…?" He blushed again.

Tarou shook his head. "No. Besides, did he ask you whether you were 'pure of body'?" Not that anyone needed to ask; Ryouga was as innocent as they came, even by his less than experienced standards.

"No. He only said the other person had to be."

Comprehension dawned. Tarou let out a guffaw of laughter at his own stupidity. The meaning was blindingly obvious when you considered how the water had affected them. "You dolts! Pure of body means un-cursed!" He chuckled again, earning puzzled looks from the other two boys. "The water doesn't cure the curse. It gives it to someone else."

Ranma blinked. "And 'cause we were all cursed, it gave us one right back!"

"That's right," Tarou nodded. He folded his arms and allowed a huge, self-satisfied smirk to creep onto his face. Who knows when the two idiots would have figured it out without him to help them along? Not that he'd ever get any acknowledgement from them, of course.

"So in order to get cured, I have to give this monster curse to someone else?" Ryouga said slowly.

"Uh, uh!" Tarou said, wagging a finger at the lost boy. "You're giving that back to me! Once we swap back I don't care what you do with your curse."

"Akari'd love to turn into a pig," Ranma offered.

"No way! I couldn't do that to her… to anyone." Ryouga shook his head unhappily.

"I could think of a few people who deserve to turn into a girl," Ranma grinned, cracking his knuckles. "The freak, for one! Or that idiot Kunou – he'd make a _great_ girl!"

Ryouga shot a disapproving look at the pig-tailed boy, and then turned his attention to Tarou. "What makes you think we'll even be able to swap back?"

"The water worked once. Why wouldn't it work again? All we need to do is go back to that shrine and get some more." He tossed his head to flick the bangs out of his eyes and smiled. "Simple." Or not. He hadn't missed the panicked look on the lost boy's face. "You don't remember where it is, do you?" Ryouga shook his head. "How to get there?" No. "Any nearby landmarks?" No. "Or what it's called?" No. Tarou pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers in an attempt to quell his rising anger. "Is it even in Japan?"

"Of course it's in Japan! I don't get _that_ lost!" Ryouga growled, his fists knotted tightly. "It was high up in the mountains. It took me a week to get from there back to Nerima. I didn't cross any water or go through any tunnels. And that's all I remember! Happy?!"

"No, a map of Honshu with a big X marking the location of your shrine, that'd make me happy," Tarou replied acidly. Something to beat up wouldn't hurt either, he reflected. A stupid, directionless ex-pig-boy something, preferably.

Ryouga dropped his head into his hands and moaned, a low animal groan somewhere between frustration and anguish. "I don't know! I don't know!" His fingers twisted roughly through his thick, shaggy hair. "I can't think straight right now… can't remember anything..." He paused, breathing heavily, and then there was a long, wet sniffling sound. "You don't know what it's like," he lamented, his voice barely above a whisper, "not being able to get anywhere you want to, not being able to remember how you got where you are, not knowing if you'll see anyone you know ever again. It's hell. Or at least I thought it was. Imagine having that and being only a few inches high, unable to even ask for directions, lost in the middle of China. Do you know how many animals, how many people, have tried to eat me?" He chuckled hollowly. "And then, I get turned into this huge, ugly beast. Not so bad, you might think. At least it won't get eaten. But no, it's worse. There was screaming. I couldn't go near anyone... they were afraid of me. And I could fly. I could've ended up in Africa or Australia… or flying around in circles out over the Pacific until I couldn't anymore." The lost boy raised his head and stared off into the distance for several moments, his brown eyes filled with sorrow. "What next, huh? What's going to happen to me next?"

Ranma opened his mouth as if to make some reply, but no words came out. Quickly, he closed it again and turned back to the campfire, an uncomfortable look on his face.

Ranma climbed to his feet and dusted his pants off with a couple of swipes of his hands. "Look, I wanna head back to the village. Maybe I can call Cologne, she might've heard something about this shrine. And I gotta tell Nabiki we've found Ryouga so she can stop looking."

"Why?" Tarou asked, curiously. "She didn't find anything, anyway."

"No, but it'll be costin' me a fortune every day she's looking. I gotta stop her before she sends me broke."

Tarou frowned. "And you want me to stay here and babysit him?" he said, jerking a thumb in the lost boy's direction.

"I don't need babysitting," Ryouga muttered, "and definitely not by him."

"Well, he can't stay here by himself," Ranma explained. "You don't want him to get lost again, do you?" Ryouga folded his arms and grumbled something under his breath, but Tarou couldn't make out the words. Ranma, ignoring the lost boy, gave Tarou what he presumably thought to be a winning smile. "C'mon, please?"

"Go ahead," Tarou said, less grudgingly than he had intended. Ranma immediately brightened and bounded off in the direction of the village. "I'll be able to get some peace and quiet for a change," he added loudly, but the pig-tailed boy was already too far away to hear.

* * *

Ranma slowed to a walk as he approached the village. It felt good to have some time to himself again. It wasn't that he didn't like having Ryouga around – if nothing else, the lost boy might draw some of Tarou's barbs away from himself – but the mood he was in was making him too depressing to be around. With any luck, he might even remember some more about that shrine once he'd had a rest; provided that Tarou didn't try to bully the information out of the poor guy, that is.

Before long, he was at the public phone. He lifted the receiver, slipped in a ten yen coin and then punched in the number for the Tendou home.

"Hello, Tendou residence," a familiar female voice answered.

"Hi, Kasumi," he said.

"Ranma!" Kasumi exclaimed happily. "How is your training trip?"

"It's going well. Is Nabiki around?"

"No, sorry," she answered. "She's still at school. It's a school day."

Damn. He'd forgotten about school.

"Can I pass on a message?"

"Um, yeah. Could you tell her…?" He paused, thinking. "Could you tell her that we've found what we were looking for? She'll know what I mean." Yeah, that oughta do it, he thought to himself happily. It would get the point across while being ambiguous enough that it wouldn't matter if Akane overheard.

"Yes, I'll tell her. By the way, I heard you were on the news two nights ago."

"Yeah, they interviewed me and everythin'," Ranma grinned.

"I was busy with dinner," Kasumi said, "and Akane was out with friends, so unfortunately neither of us was able to see it. Mrs Saotome was very proud; she said you looked very manly."

Ranma allowed his chest to puff out a little. Naturally he'd have looked manly, especially standing next to Tarou.

"Anyway, Ranma, I need to go out shopping now," Kasumi continued, "but I'll be sure to pass on your message."

"Thanks, Kasumi."

It was only seconds after he'd hung up the phone that he realised that he should have asked Kasumi for the phone number for the Nekohanten. He wondered if he should ring back, but decided against it. The local convenience store would probably have a phone book – and, more importantly, food, his growling stomach added. He could grab something to eat, call Cologne, and then head back to camp. Or he could wait here a few more hours and then he could talk to Akane. Not that he _needed_ to talk to the tomboy, of course, but surely she would like to hear from him again. Yeah, that sounded like a plan.

Ranma slid aside the door to the convenience store and stepped inside. It was pleasantly cool inside after being out in the heat of the sun. He quickly grabbed a few things off the shelves – some crackers, fruit and a can of drink – and then made his way to the small, mousy looking man standing behind the front counter.

The man looked him up and down, and then glanced out of the window into the street. "That'll be 420 yen, please."

Ranma slipped some coins onto the counter. "You got a Tokyo phone book I can borrow?"

The shopkeeper dug out a phone book from behind the counter. Ranma gratefully accepted it and thumbed through until he found the number for the Nekohanten, which he scribbled onto the back of his hand. He flipped the book shut and pushed it back towards the shopkeeper, who was gazing distractedly out of the window again.

"You… uh," the man began, nervously. "Your lady friend isn't around, is she?"

Lady friend? Ranma burst out laughing. "No, she's not here today." The shopkeeper looked crestfallen. "But I'll let her know you asked about her."

Ranma gathered up his purchases and left the shop, still chuckling to himself. He couldn't wait to tell Tarou; the guy would _not _be impressed.

* * *

"I hate boys!"

She hadn't said those words for over a year, but she said them now. She hated boys! Especially, one particular boy, who had left over a week ago on a so-called training trip and then been seen on television with a girl! How could he? After everything they'd been through; after nearly giving her life for him in China, and nearly getting married to him; after putting up with him flirting with Shampoo and Ukyou and then finally learning to trust him, how could he go and do this to her now?

Akane dropped her school bag onto the ground and leaned over the wire fence, watching an empty chip packet dance wildly in the wind and then land in the canal. She wiped at the tears that were trickling down her cheeks. She wasn't crying, damnit! What did she care what that pervert did?

She heard footsteps approaching and hurriedly dried her eyes.

"Akane Tendou," a familiar voice intoned. "The heavens themselves weep to see such tears. Surely, you are not mourning the loss of the villainous Saotome?"

Tatewaki Kunou, clad in his usual blue and black kendo uniform, slung his bokken over one shoulder and leaned back against the fence beside her.

"No! Why should I care what he does?"

Kunou produced a fan out of his kimono and opened it with a deft flick of his wrist. "Then we shall date!" he announced, beaming at her.

Akane clenched her fists and groaned. Kunou was an obsessive, deranged idiot. Normally, she wouldn't have bothered asking him, except that he had been the one to let slip about Ranma that morning. No-one else had, not even her family.

At least he hadn't wrapped himself around her yet. She allowed her hands to drop, and smiled sweetly up at him. "Upperclassman Kuno, you said you'd tell me more about the girl on the news report."

He nodded sagely. "Ah yes, the fair Panko. A cousin of the vile Ranma Saotome, but no more alike him than the day is like the night."

Ranma's cousin? That couldn't be true. Ranma didn't have any cousins. And Panko? It had to be a fake name; it was too close to Ranko to be a coincidence.

"Clearly, he has captured her innocent heart and enslaved her," Kunou continued passionately, clenching a fist tightly. "Oh, I nearly wept with pity when she put her arms around his neck!"

Akane felt her face grow cold, then hot. Ranma let himself be hugged by this girl… on television?!

She didn't know if she could trust herself to speak, but she eventually regained enough control of her vocal chords to ask what the girl had looked like.

"A true beauty, rivalling yourself or the pig-tailed girl," Kunou said. "Fair of complexion, dark of hair. And she wore a most curious shirt, made of some reptilian creature, I suspect."

Akane's heart sank. So, this Panko was pretty, too. That must be why Ranma liked her. He had used to say she was un-cute and flatchested all the time, but he hadn't said those things for a while. She'd thought that maybe – just maybe – that meant that he actually liked the way she looked, that maybe she _was_ cute, after all. How could she have been so stupid? She felt tears start to well up in her eyes again, and turned away so that Kunou wouldn't see her.

"Fear not, Akane Tendou. When the villain returns I shall smite him, and free you, the pig-tailed girl, and fair Panko from his evil clutches!" Kunou raised his bokken high into the air and began to cackle wildly. There was a rumble of thunder.

Akane dried her eyes, thankful that Kunou's observation skills were up to their usual standard. For a moment, she wondered whether she should be putting much faith in his account of what happened, but then dismissed the thought. Deep down, she knew it had to be true. Kunou had described things in detail; he had remembered the girl's name, even remembered the clothes she had been wearing. A reptilian shirt? This Panko must be a real tom-boy to wear something like that!

"Methinks a storm is coming," Kunou said. Akane nodded, noting the thick, black clouds that had gathered in the sky. "Allow me to walk you to your abode," he added, sweeping a hand grandly through his hair.

"No, thanks," she answered. He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off as quickly as she could, adding, "I'll be home in a couple of minutes, anyway."

For a moment he looked crestfallen, but it didn't last long. "We shall date tomorrow, then!"

There was no point contradicting him; Kunou's listening skills ranked up there with his observation skills. Akane turned to go, but then stopped on a whim.

"What was the news report about?" she asked.

"There was a monster on the loose. The vile Saotome and his cousin Panko had vowed to stop it."

Not exactly a romantic getaway, then, but that probably didn't matter with Ranma. "Oh," she said dully. "What kind of monster was it?"

Why had she asked, anyway? What difference did it make what kind of monster it was?

"Some kind of vast, tentacled monstrosity, I believe," he replied, puzzled.

She blinked. Vast, tentacled monstrosity? She knew of only one creature that fitted that description – Tarou's cursed form. But why would Ranma and this girl be chasing him? She felt something at the back of her brain, trying to get her attention. There was something about the girl's description that seemed odd, too, but what was it?

There was another rumble of thunder, which almost drowned out Kunou's voice.

"What did you just say, Kunou?"

Whatever it was that was trying to get her attention was _really_ jumping around now. The shirt! Had he meant scaled?

"I said they gave the name of that monster, since you seem to be interested." Kunou slung his bokken back over his shoulder and turned to walk away. "It was called Ryouga."

Akane felt her mouth fall open.

The thunder rumbled again. The rain began to fall.

* * *

Ranma frowned up at the rapidly darkening sky, slipped ten yen into the public phone, and punched in the number for the Tendou Dojo. He'd have to make this quick; it was going to start pouring down any minute.

The phone rang once, twice, three times.

"Hello, Tendou residence."

"Hi, Nabiki."

"Ah, Ranma. Kasumi passed on your message. Where are you, anyway?"

"Same place I was two days ago. Why?"

"Just curious. Don't forget, you might have found him yourself but you still owe me."

Ranma groaned inwardly. "How much?"

"1,500 yen per day, remember? That makes 10,500."

Ranma winced. It hadn't seemed like much at the time, but, then again, he had expected to find Ryouga within a day or two. "That's pretty steep."

"You agreed to it." She gave a small chuckle. "Tell you what, I could reduce it to 7,000 yen and a photo shoot. A special rate just for you, of course."

She'd make more than 3,500 yen selling photos of him, but at least it was less out of his pocket. And she always found a way to photograph him anyway; it was better to agree to it and then have _some_ control over how compromising the photos were. He nodded dumbly, and then stopped himself when he realised she wouldn't see it over the phone.

"Sure."

"I could even reduce it to 5,000 if your little friend would agree to a photo shoot," she offered happily.

Ranma thought briefly about how he'd go about asking Tarou to pose on camera, in girl form, topless, just to reduce _his _debt by 2,000 yen. "Nah, I don't think he'd go for that."

"Pity. Kunou-baby's just dying for some pictures of 'fair cousin Panko'."

Ranma's mouth went dry. Tarou had been seen with _his_ girl curse.

"I must say," she continued dryly, "it wasn't very clever allowing yourself to be interviewed on television with him like that. Not if you're trying to keep this business of yours a secret."

Kasumi had said Akane hadn't seen it. If it was only Kunou, everything would still be okay.

There was a rumble of thunder. He didn't have much longer.

"Is Akane home yet?"

"She's in the bath. She got soaked by the rain on the way home." There was a pause. "Actually, she seemed pretty upset. Did you do something to her, perhaps?" Nabiki was smiling now; he could hear it in her voice.

"How could I? You know where I've…" He trailed off. Nabiki knew exactly what he'd been up to. That had to be why she had asked.

Had Akane seen something, after all? Had somebody told her? How much had she found out?

Oh, crap.

He had to talk to her.

There was a flash of lightning, and an answering crack of thunder. A raindrop splattered heavily onto the ground nearby, followed by another.

"Look, I gotta go. I'll call tomorrow… same time, okay?"

"I'll tell her."

The phone crackled ominously, and then went dead.

Ranma hung up the handset and glared at the sky. He mentally calculated his chances of making it back to the convenience store before it really started raining. He'd have to worry about getting back to camp after the rain had stopped.

He broke into a run.

The thunder rumbled again. The rain began to fall.

* * *

Revision History: None yet 


	6. Chapter 6: Things Fall Apart

Disclaimer: I don't own and didn't create Ranma ½ or any of these characters.

* * *

**Chapter Six: Things Fall Apart**

The wind howled and lashed at the little tent, making its sides flap like the sails of an old sailing ship. Ryouga sat as far from the entrance as he could, his knees drawn up against his chest. Periodically, the wind would catch the tent flap and tug it aside, giving him glimpses of the cloaked figure scurrying about in the pelting rain outside.

At least he was inside, safe from the storm. He dreaded turning back into that… _thing_… again, but he knew he would, sooner or later. Ranma and Tarou couldn't keep an eye on him forever, and before long he'd get lost, and then it would rain, and then he'd turn into that monster again. And then he'd feel them, all those different creatures, with their flight instincts and their survival urges, their different fears and hungers; an endless cacophony of contradicting voices all screaming inside his head.

He let his forehead sink onto his knees and squeezed his eyes shut. It didn't matter whether he got lost now anyway. He still didn't know the way back to the shrine, and without that water, they were all stuck with their new curses. It was hopeless.

The sound of the tent flap being pushed aside jolted him from his thoughts. He opened his eyes.

"I think I found everything." Tarou dropped the bowls, water bottles, kettle and cooking pot that he'd been carrying into the corner, and then zipped the tent closed. He shrugged off his cloak, carelessly spraying water droplets throughout the tent.

"Hey, watch it!" Ryouga growled.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the Chinese boy smirked. "You're not afraid of a little water, are you?" He waved his cloak at Ryouga, almost playfully.

"Stop it! I'll destroy the tent if I change inside!"

"Calm down." Tarou bundled up his cloak and tossed it into the corner. "There wasn't enough water to change you."

Ryouga glared at the Chinese martial artist. That hadn't been very nice, teasing him like that. "It's all your fault anyway."

Tarou raised an eyebrow. "So I control the weather now?"

"If you hadn't been chasing Happousai, I wouldn't have this horrible curse!"

"And I wouldn't have this one if you hadn't been carting around that water without knowing what it did!" Tarou dropped onto his knees and began to rummage through a backpack. "Face it. You didn't know what that old man meant. If I hadn't come along – and believe me, I wish I hadn't – you two would have used it on yourselves. All that'd be different is you'd have ended up with fem-boy's curse instead of mine."

Ryouga stared. He could have had Ranma's curse… the girl curse! Oh, what he wouldn't give to have a curse that let him stay human! So what if he had to deal with the likes of Kunou and Happousai? He could cope with that, if it meant he didn't turn into a potential meal or a child's pet or a walking abomination.

He noticed Tarou peering at him quizzically, his head cocked slightly to one side.

"What?"

The Chinese boy smiled unpleasantly. It was the kind of smile that set Ryouga's teeth on edge, one that had absolutely nothing to do with friendliness or good humour. "Nothing," he smirked. He extracted a small, portable gas stove from the bottom of the backpack and sat it on the ground next to him, and then started to fill the kettle from a water bottle.

Ryouga soon tired of watching him and lay down in his bedroll, his hands clasped behind his head in a confident pose that he did not feel. Before long, he heard the other boy finish what he was doing and do the same.

He felt on edge, in the same way that he always did when he was stuck in his piglet form in the woods after dark; that pervading sense of unease of waiting for the fox to cry, or for the twig to snap. It had to be the storm, kept separate from him by only a flimsy sheet of canvas. Or the beast inside him, waiting only for a splash of cold water so it could be released. Or knowing that there was nothing he could do to put things right, that he wouldn't find that shrine again even if he wandered for the rest of his life.

He closed his eyes and allowed his attention to drift back to the sounds of the wind and rain outside. The wind had lessened, by the sound of it. At least it was no longer threatening to blow the tent away.

"Uh, Tarou," Ryouga said, "how far away is that village that Ranma went to?"

"You should know. You were there."

"Yes, but how far is it?" Ryouga grumbled. "He left this morning. Shouldn't he be back by now?"

"I expected him back several hours ago, actually."

"Something might have happened."

"To fem-boy? I doubt it."

Ryouga considered this for a moment. Ranma could survive just about anything, but it was raining. He'd be in pig form. And there was only another hour or so until nightfall.

He was distracted from his thoughts by sounds of the other boy moving around, the backpack rustling, and metal clanking against porcelain. He rolled onto his side, to see the Chinese boy watching him over the top of a cup of tea.

"Is there enough for me?" Ryouga asked flatly.

Tarou gazed down at him disapprovingly for several moments, and then held out an empty cup with his free hand, jiggling it back and forth in his fingers as he waited for the other boy to take it. Ryouga sighed and poured himself a cup of tea. There had to be something he could do. He wasn't used to having company on his training journeys. The silence felt awkward, but to break it he'd have to talk to the Chinese boy, and he didn't want to do that either.

If only he had his backpack. If only he had his pens and paper, he could write a letter to Akari. It didn't matter how dark the world seemed, how lost and alone he felt, just writing to her – or thinking about her – was enough to make him feel warm inside. He couldn't just hide from her forever. Sooner or later, he'd have to tell her what happened – once he figured out a way of doing it, that is. First, he'd have to find his way back to her farm – much easier said than done, of course – and then…

_"Oh Ryouga!"_ she'd cry. _"You're back!"_

She would race towards him with arms outstretched, the way she always did… the way Akane had used to do in his dreams. It wouldn't matter whether she'd been in the middle of training Katsunishiki, drinking tea with her father or feeding the pigs, she would drop it and fly out to greet him with a huge smile on her beautiful face.

Sometimes it all seemed too good to be true.

She'd wrap her arms around him, her cheek resting against his chest and her tiny hands pressed into the middle of his back. She always felt so small and soft and fragile in his arms, like a little mouse cupped in his hand, its heartbeat fluttering against his palm. He had to be so careful; if he forgot his strength even for a second, he would crush her. He would never, ever forgive himself if anything happened to her.

But how was he supposed to tell her about his new curse? And how would she react? Would she scream? Run away? Send him away? Or maybe she'd say the one thing he feared the most, the thing that deep in his heart he knew was true.

_"I only loved you because you were a pig." _

No! Akari! How could he bear it? He thought he'd found someone who could love him despite his curse! How could he go back to being alone? Oh, his poor heart!

"Who's Akari?"

Ryouga froze. Had he spoken out loud? "She's m-my…" He twiddled his index fingers together awkwardly. "She's my girlfriend." For the moment, anyway.

"Girlfriend?" Tarou snorted. He seemed annoyed. He settled back down onto his bedroll, hands clasped behind his head, and smiled slyly. "Did you finally get sick of playing pet piggy for fem-boy's girl?"

Ryouga felt his blood rush to his face. "What did you say?" he said menacingly, clenching his fists.

Tarou simply chuckled in reply.

"You take that back!" Ryouga roared as he launched himself at the other boy, fist cocked. His knuckles thudded into the bedroll where Tarou's head had been only a fraction of a second earlier.

"Did I hit a nerve?" the Chinese boy chuckled from behind him.

"Shut up! What else has Ranma told you?"

Ryouga raised his fist and lunged towards Tarou again. The Chinese boy nimbly avoided the blow and landed crouching in the corner, facing way from the lost boy. Ryouga spotted the opening at once and took it. He was going to wipe that smirk off the other boy's face once and for all. It would be easy in here; Tarou might be fast, but trapped in the tent Ryouga had the advantage.

As Ryouga rushed in, Tarou spun around and smirked. It took Ryouga a moment to realise what the other boy was holding in his hand. Tarou waved the water bottle back and forth threateningly, causing a few drops to splash out of the open neck. Ryouga froze, his mind racing and his fist still poised to strike.

"What are you going to do? Splash me in here?" Ryouga hoped that Tarou hadn't heard the tremor in his voice.

"Afraid?" the Chinese boy sneered.

Ryouga blinked. Had Tarou's hand wavered for a moment? "You won't do it," he added, more confidently. "I defeated you before and I will do it again."

Tarou's jaw tensed. "Even if you did," he said acidly, "you've got nowhere to go afterwards. It's still raining. You won't be able to change back."

It was true, Ryouga realised. Slowly, he let his fist drop, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the other boy. Eventually, Tarou did the same, and Ryouga let out a deep breath that he hadn't even realised he'd been holding. Even so, he didn't turn his back on the other boy until the lid had been firmly screwed back onto the water bottle.

Ryouga dropped back onto his bedroll in a cross legged position and watched Tarou do the same. A strong gust of rain-drenched wind whipped against the tent, causing the sides to billow in alarmingly. The storm didn't show any signs of letting up. Ranma was out there… somewhere… in pig form. He might be in trouble.

Ryouga glanced around the tent, looking for his umbrella. He couldn't see it, but then again he hadn't seen it previously either. An umbrella wouldn't be much protection against horizontal rain anyway.

He spotted Tarou's cloak lying bundled up in the corner. "How waterproof is that?" he asked, pointing.

"Pretty much." Tarou's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why?"

"I'm going to look for Ranma," Ryouga said, making his way to the entrance. He reached for the cloak.

The Chinese boy stomped a foot down on top of the cloak as if that could prevent Ryouga from taking it. "Oh, no you don't," he snapped. "It took a week to find you last time you went wandering."

"Come with me then."

"What?" Tarou sneered. "And get turned into a girl?"

"You can fit inside the tent to get changed back. I can't."

"And have you ogle me while I do? No, I'll go by myself."

Ryouga opened his mouth to reply with an angry retort, but before he could, Tarou had grabbed the cloak, wrapped it around himself and left. He hadn't even bothered to close the tent flap behind him. The wind gusted again, spattering raindrops into the tent. Ryouga backed away carefully. He couldn't risk transforming inside.

Even if the Chinese boy hadn't splashed him, he could have easily wrecked the tent during their fight. So often, he forgot his own strength when he was fighting. Ryouga wrapped his arms around his knees and hugged them to his chest. It was all Tarou's fault. He shouldn't have said what he had about Akane and P-Chan… even if it was true.

---

Ryouga awoke with a start. He was being watched; he could sense it. Instinctively, he clenched a fist – it wasn't the first time that thieves had decided that a lone teenage boy was a tempting target – but he relaxed it again when he remembered where he was.

He reached for the torch beside him, and turned it on.

"Aah!" Ranma squawked, shoving the torch away from his face. "You coulda warned me!"

Ryouga placed the torch down on the ground. There was barely enough light to see by, but it was enough.

"Ranma?" Ryouga sat up in bed. The storm had ended, by the sound of it, but he could still hear the sound of raindrops pattering gently against the canvas. "B-but it's still raining. How did you…?" He trailed off when he noticed Ranma's grin, and the wet, half-open umbrella in the pigtailed boy's hand. It was pink with ridiculously cute, yellow ducklings all over it. "Suits you," the lost boy added, smirking.

"Shut up," Ranma grumbled. "It was the only one they had left." He tossed the umbrella into the corner and began unfastening his shirt. "I shoulda got a torch, too. Could hardly see a thing out there."

"Did you find out anything?"

"What?" For a moment, Ranma seemed rattled, but he quickly recovered. "Oh, you mean the old ghoul? Nah. She said she might be able to help if I told her the name of the place though."

Ryouga felt a surge of guilt. He had known the name of the shrine, had seen the sign over the door with its name, but he couldn't remember it. Things could be okay, if only he could remember.

Ranma stripped off his shirt and gave it a sniff. He shot it a look of disgust and tossed it into the corner. "Where's Tarou gone?"

Ryouga glanced over towards the empty bedroll at the far side of the tent. "I don't know," he said. "He was here when I went to sleep."

Ranma tugged off his pants, and then held them aloft between a thumb and forefinger.

"Yes, they stink," Ryouga said, wrinkling his nose. "Why don't you wash them?"

"Guess I'll have to." The pants were added to the growing pile in the corner. "I'll need hot water to do it. Hooves aren't that good at stuff."

Ryouga snorted. "Tell me about it."

"I s'pose you would know about it," the pigtailed boy murmured. He sat down crosslegged beside Ryouga and rubbed at his chin pensively. For a long while, he seemed like he was about to speak, but he didn't.

Ryouga soon became fed up with waiting. "Why are you so late back?"

Ranma folded his arms across his chest. "It's a school day. I had to wait for Nabiki to get home, didn't I?"

Ryouga blinked. "You don't have to be so defensive."

"I ain't bein' defensive!" the pigtailed boy snapped.

"Whatever you say, Ranma," Ryouga sighed. He lay back down in his bedroll and pulled the blanket back over himself. "Turn the light off when you're done, okay?"

"Hmm? Oh, sure."

---

Tarou opened his eyes. He hadn't been asleep, but in a half-dozing, half-awake state that might have been pleasant if he hadn't been curled up uncomfortably under a tree. His neck was stiff, and his legs ached from being tucked up inside the cloak, out of the rain, for most of the night. He rearranged his cloak around him and allowed his legs to stretch out for a while.

How long had he been out here? He could see the faint glimmerings of dawn on the horizon, so it must have been… five hours… six? His thoughts drifted back to that soft, warm bedroll in the tent that he could have slept in. It hadn't taken him long to get used to that, had it? Or the tent. Or the company. A couple of nights of sleeping rough like he was used to should cure him of that.

He worked his way to his feet and yawned, stretching. At least it had stopped raining. It never rained this much in Qinghai, and these sudden downpours and storms were becoming annoying.

Tarou slung his cloak over his shoulder and strode off through the trees, not caring where he went as long as it was away from the campsite. He didn't want to go back there until he felt more like himself, and he certainly didn't need to put up with the ex-pig-boy whinging because his little ex-fem-boy friend hadn't returned yet. He couldn't stay away too long, though. With the rain finished, the directionless idiot might take it into his head to go searching by himself, and then he'd get lost, and there'd be no hope of Tarou getting his monster body back…

Tarou quickly buried the thought. Still, if Ranma hadn't returned, he should probably go and search for him again… only to keep the ex-pig-boy from complaining, of course. And it wasn't like he was _stuck_ with the girl curse, he reminded himself. All he needed to do was go back to Jusenkyou and get himself re-cursed, like he had planned earlier. It wouldn't be hard. All he'd have to do is swim to China, walk west to Qinghai, and try to avoid all of the powerful, dangerous people in the area that he'd managed to piss off over the years. The ones he probably wouldn't be able to defeat without his monster form. The ones who would try to take advantage of his weak girl body. They might even try to…

No.

He squashed that line of thought, too. It seemed like he'd been doing that a lot lately. Strange.

Before long, he found himself approaching the waterhole. A small flock of speckled brown ducks drifted peacefully on the surface of the water. At the sight, his stomach rumbled. They would make a delicious breakfast, once they were roasted and seasoned. He licked his lips in anticipation, and began to slip toward them.

Once within range, he stopped and glanced around for some projectiles. The ducks were too spread out to hit with a single stick, so he picked up several suitably sized pebbles. He paused, testing the weight of one in his palm. They still hadn't noticed him yet. He took aim, and let the stone fly, followed by another, then another.

A tremendous flapping, splashing, squawking sound filled the air as the ducks panicked and took off. Tarou waited for all the floating feathers to clear, and then cast his eye over the surface of the water. Two ducks floated limply on the surface of the water. He must have missed the third, startling the rest. He berated himself under his breath; he hadn't missed an easy shot like that in years.

He used a stick to drag the bodies to the edge of the waterhole, and then bent to retrieve them. He couldn't feel a heartbeat, but he snapped their necks with a practiced twist of his wrist, just in case.

He grasped both ducks by the feet and stood up again, catching a glimpse of himself in the surface of the water as he did. He was proud of his appearance normally, but the deep purple circles under his eyes spoke all too eloquently of the many nights of broken sleep. He raked the fingers of his free hand through his hair a few times to fluff it up, but it just hung there limply around his face.

"You finished gazin' at yourself yet?"

Startled, he spun around. Ranma was approaching, a cheeky grin plastered across his face. Tarou scowled. The pigtailed boy wasn't even trying to move quietly. There was no way he should have been able to sneak up like that; he hadn't been able to in the past.

"You're up early," Tarou said, "or did you just get back?"

"Been back since last night." Ranma crouched by the water and lowered a water bottle into it, holding it under by his fingertips to get as little of his hand wet as possible. The grin had faded, and he was absorbed with watching the bubbles bursting against the surface of the water. "Where'd you run off to?"

"Slept out."

"Yeah, it looks like it." The pigtailed boy gave a humourless little smile. "What happened to watchin' after Ryouga?"

"It was raining," Tarou said matter-of-factly. "Where was he going to go?"

"Doesn't matter. You still shoulda stayed with him." Ranma pulled the water bottle out, screwed the cap back on, and then dunked the second one under.

Tarou knelt down on the grass and laid the ducks beside him. "I didn't expect I'd have to babysit him half the night," he muttered.

Ranma screwed the lid on the second bottle and laid it aside. "Look, Tarou," he said, "I gotta go back to that village again tonight. Can you stay with him again? Properly, this time."

"Why? Did the old crone actually come up with something useful?"

Ranma paused for a moment. "No, I need to talk to 'kane-"

"Figures," Tarou smirked.

"Hey, are you gonna let me explain or not?" Ranma growled. "I couldn't talk to her last night, but I think Akane's figured out why we're out here. I think she knows about Ryouga."

"So?"

"You know about P-Chan, right? About how he's Akane's pet? She used to take him to bed with her. Nah, it wasn't like that," the pigtailed boy added quickly, raising a hand. "I woulda stopped him if it was. She never figured out that Ryouga was P-Chan. She's gonna kill me."

"More likely she'll kill him." So much for ex-pig-boy's innocent act. Had he been in fem-boy's position, he'd have squashed the little twerp.

"She prob'ly will, but she'll kill me worse. I knew about it, and I didn't tell her."

"So, when are you going to tell him?" Tarou said, grinning.

"You're a sadistic jerk, you know that? I ain't gonna tell him, not yet. Not until I find out whether it's true or not. And I don't want you tellin' him either, you got that?"

"You think you'd be able to stop me?" Tarou queried, raising an eyebrow curiously.

"Jeez, Tarou! Why've you always gotta be like this? I knew I shouldna told you anythin'!"

"Why did you then?"

"Dunno." Ranma picked a pebble up from the ground and rolled it around in his fingers, lost in thought. He lobbed the pebble into the water. "Maybe I thought I could trust you to keep your mouth shut."

A single duck feather, speckled brown and black, bobbed along on the ripples until it hit the muddy bank.

Tarou stared numbly at the surface of the water, and wondered what that nagging little feeling at the back of his mind was. "Okay, fine," he said, raising his hands. "I won't tell him."

Ranma looked doubtful. "Really?"

Tarou nodded.

The cloud that had been hanging over Ranma's head lifted. That nagging feeling had gone too. Tarou looked up into the pigtailed boy's eyes, and, just for a moment, wondered if this was what it felt like to have a friend.

Ranma picked up the bottles, climbed to his feet and wiped the damp grass from his legs with a few sweeps of his free hand. Tarou stood up also.

"Are those for breakfast?" Ranma said, indicating the ducks.

"No, I thought I'd just carry them around for a while."

Ranma gave a dry little chuckle. "I knew I kept you around for a reason." Tarou blinked, puzzled. "Your cooking," the pigtailed boy clarified. "Now, if only I could get you to wash my clothes for me, too."

"Not a chance."

"Nah, didn't think so." Ranma clapped Tarou on the shoulder with an open hand. "C'mon, I'm gettin' hungry."

---

The fist approached with all of the ponderous inevitability of an incoming asteroid. Ranma wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead and calculated his options. Even at less than full power, Ryouga's punch would hurt like hell if it hit. It was fortunate that the lost boy didn't have the speed to land many of his blows.

He waited until the fist was almost upon him, and then ducked to the side, sending the lost boy flying with a powerful kick to his back.

"You still leave a helluva lot of openings," Ranma quipped, cracking his knuckles.

Ryouga climbed to his feet and turned to face the pigtailed boy. "Are you going to talk or fight?" he said, raising his fists.

"Fightin' sounds good to me."

Ranma launched himself at his opponent, hoping that Ryouga would do the same. The two boys met in midair, trading blows that would have shattered concrete. Ranma weaved between Ryouga's fists and let loose with a flurry of punches of his own before the other boy had a chance to block. His knuckles thudded satisfyingly into the lost boy's flesh but, for all the effect they had, he may as well have missed.

Ranma landed and spun around to face the other boy. Ryouga was standing in a half crouched position, fists balled, looking like a tiger about to pounce. He looked like he always had – a dangerous opponent – not like someone who had nearly died only two days earlier.

"You sure you're up for this?" Ranma smirked. "I don't need you dying on me or nothin'."

Ryouga grinned, his lips quirking upward to reveal his pointed canines. "Of course I'm up for it. Do you want to stop already?"

Ranma heard a chuckle from behind him, and risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Tarou was leaning up against a nearby tree, arms crossed, and a huge smirk plastered across his face.

"Dunno what you're laughin' about," Ranma tossed over his shoulder. "I could take you both on at the same time if I wanted."

"Really?" came the disbelieving reply.

Apparently, Ryouga didn't believe him either. The lost boy shot a puzzled look in Tarou's direction, and then shrugged. "Okay, Ranma, you're on."

Ranma felt the thrill of adrenalin as the Chinese boy moved into position. He hadn't had a proper challenge like this in months. He'd show them who was the best!

"Uh, Tarou," he said. "Sparring match, remember? No tryin' to kill each other, no splashing each other…?"

"So?"

"So, you won't be needin' that water bottle you've got strapped to your waist, will you?"

"Silly me." The look of innocence on the Chinese boy's face was spoilt by the smirk that he hadn't quite managed to hide.

Ranma waited impatiently as the water bottle was untied and tossed off to one side, and then drew himself into a combat stance. Now, all he had to do was work out how on earth he was going to defeat these two.

As expected, Ryouga charged first. Ranma ignored the boy's extended fist, and planted a powerful kick to his chest, driving him back. He sensed something at his back – Tarou had already managed to slip around behind him. He whirled around, but was too slow to avoid the punch that the Chinese boy had aimed at his jaw. His head snapped back with the impact, but he ignored the pain and pressed forward, aiming a flurry of punches at Tarou's smirking face which the Chinese boy dodged with infuriating ease.

Ranma felt the distinctive rush of heat as Ryouga attacked from behind. At the same time, Tarou pressed forward again. Ranma slid to one side, not wanting to get caught between them. The two boys followed after him, with Ryouga attacking straight on and Tarou trying to swing back around to the side. Ranma soon found himself on the defensive, dodging the fanged boy's rapid kicks and punches while trying not to let the Chinese boy slip from his sight.

He felt something at his back, and risked a quick glance over his shoulder to check. He had been driven back against a large tree. At the same time as Ryouga lunged forward with a powerful punch, he leapt straight up. The lost boy's fist sank into the tree trunk with a huge splintering crunch, right behind where Ranma's head had been only moments earlier. Ranma landed lightly on a branch, near the trunk, wondering why Ryouga hadn't followed him up.

Suddenly, the tree gave a sickening lurch and began to topple. Heart racing, he sprinted down the length of the branch and sprang from the end.

For a moment, he thought he wasn't going to make it. He was back inside the branches and he couldn't see. Leaves and twigs scraped down his body, as if the tree were intent on clawing him down to earth with it. Then, just as quickly, he was free again, sailing through the air. He flipped in midair so he could see behind him, just in time to see the huge tree crashing down in a hail of twigs and leaves.

He landed and waited. One heartbeat. Two. Three. Leaves fluttered to the ground around him, but otherwise, all was still.

"Hey, guys?" he called hesitantly.

Ranma sensed rapid movement behind him, and lashed out with an elbow. It connected solidly with his attacker's side, eliciting a grunt of pain. He turned to see Tarou, rubbing at his ribs irritably.

"So, there you are," Ranma said. He lowered his fists. "Where's Ryouga?"

The Chinese boy looked around, and then shrugged. "No idea. Unlike bacon brain, I don't wait around to get hit by falling trees."

"Over here," a muffled voice called out.

There was an explosion, followed by a hail of rocks, and a large crack snaked out along the ground from under the tree. Ryouga burst out of the ground in another shower of rocks. He landed in a defensive crouch, but then relaxed when he caught sight of Ranma.

"Are we finished already?" Ryouga said, picking a clod of dirt from his ear.

"Not unless you are," Ranma smirked, cracking his knuckles. He dropped back into his combat stance, and waited for the others to do the same.

---

Ryouga dropped to his knees, panting heavily. That sparring session had taken more out of him than he'd thought it would. The sight of Ranma sprawled on the ground beside him made him feel a little better though. Tarou was standing off to one side, leaning against a tree nonchalantly. On closer inspection though, Ryouga could see that he too had sweat streaming down his face.

Ryouga worked his way to his feet and stretched. It felt like he'd been caught in a rockslide. His whole body had been pummelled, no individual blow hard enough to hurt, but the cumulative effect was painful.

Ranma flopped onto his back and groaned. "What I wouldn't give for a hot spring right now."

Ryouga rubbed at an aching muscle and nodded his agreement. He glared at the Chinese boy. "What were you hitting me for anyway? We were supposed to be fighting Ranma."

"You hit me first."

"You got in the way," Ryouga snapped in reply.

"Funny how the only way you can hit me is when you're aiming for him," Tarou sneered, jerking a thumb in Ranma's direction. He chuckled. The sound set Ryouga's teeth on edge. "Even your fists get lost."

Ryouga's fists clamped shut reflexively. "You take that back."

"Or what? You'll _try _to hit me again?" Tarou sniggered again. "Tell you what. I'll even turn my back."

Tarou stepped away from the tree, and turned around so that he was facing the other way.

Ryouga felt his face flush as anger, hot and dark, coursed through him. He let out an inarticulate snarl of rage and, ignoring his aching body, launched himself at the Chinese boy.

At the last moment, just when Ryouga thought that the other boy had no hope of escaping, Tarou spun around in a blur. He slid around the approaching fist like it wasn't there, and plunged a set of knuckles hard into Ryouga's throat. On anyone else, it would have been a killing blow.

Ryouga staggered back, gasping for breath.

Tarou folded his arms across his chest and smirked. "Oh, come on. You're tougher than that."

"Why you…!" Ryouga growled.

Ryouga gritted his teeth and pressed in harder, attacking with a ferocity that he hadn't felt since his early fights with Ranma. The jerk was mocking him now, laughing and weaving around his kicks and punches like they were nothing, not even bothering to fight back.

No, he wasn't going to beat Tarou on pure speed. And he was tiring; he couldn't keep this up forever. He had to come up with something soon.

He lunged forward again with his right fist, aiming for his opponent's shoulder. He waited until Tarou ducked to the side, and then sent his left hand snaking out towards the boy's waist, feeling a surge of triumph as his fingers brushed against the fluttering lengths of pantyhose. Quickly, he latched hold of the sash around the knot, and used it to haul the Chinese boy toward him. At the same time, he drove his fist hard into the boy's stomach.

Ryouga took advantage of his opponent's surprise and attacked again. He held him by the sash with one hand, and then drove his other fist again and again into Tarou's face, ignoring the look of pain and panic he saw there. The Chinese boy soon gave up trying to hit back, and threw his arms up in front of his face to protect himself. At some point they tripped, and he landed sprawling on top of the other boy, but still he didn't stop hitting. He was going to pay the jerk back for the time he had kidnapped Akane, and for every time he'd called him pig-boy, and every time he'd sneered at his sense of direction, and…

He heard a voice call his name, and felt strong hands gripping his shoulders, and the mad, roaring rage vanished as quickly as it had come.

"Jeez, Ryouga! What the hell were you doin'?"

Ryouga stared in confusion at the battered, still form beneath him. "I… I don't know," he mumbled, sliding to the ground. "I just wanted to stop him making fun of me."

"Well, I think you did that."

Ranma knelt down beside Tarou, and lightly slapped his swollen, bruised cheek. The Chinese boy whimpered and rolled his head to the side, causing a trickle of blood to run from his nose. He was conscious, but only barely.

Ryouga felt a wave of guilt wash over him. He had only meant to teach the boy a lesson, and if Ranma hadn't stopped him…

"C'mon," Ranma said, sliding an arm under Tarou's shoulders. "Let's get him back to camp."

---

He was lying on his back under an expanse of dark green. He wasn't sure why.

Everything hurt. He felt like… he couldn't describe what he felt like, but it put him in mind of the time that he'd crashed onto some rocks from fifty feet up in the air, back when he'd first been learning to fly. That had hurt, too.

Eventually, everything swam back into focus enough for him to make out his surroundings. He was lying under a large tree, not too far from the campsite if the smell of woodsmoke was any indication. He could hear the other two boys talking, but they were too far away for him to make out what they were saying.

Tarou tried to work his way up into a sitting position. His head throbbed, protesting against even that gentle movement, so he lay back down again.

"Hey," Ranma called out, "you're awake."

"Apparently." It even hurt to talk.

Ranma wandered over and knelt down beside Tarou. He leaned in close, peering intently at the damage. "The swelling's goin' down already," he said brightly. "You heal pretty quick… not as quick as me, of course." The pigtailed boy then leaned back on his heels, arms folded, and added, "I hope this ain't gonna become a habit of yours."

"What?"

"You gettin' beat up by Ryouga and me havin' to save you," Ranma grinned.

Tarou felt a surge of mingled shame and anger. "Got to play hero again, did you?" he said bitterly.

Ranma shot him a pointed look. "Y'know, some people might be grateful they were saved."

"I'm not some people," the Chinese boy said, carefully working his way up into a sitting position. "I'm me."

"Yeah, well look where that got you."

Tarou shot a baleful glare at Ryouga, who was pottering about on the far side of the tent. "Next time I fight him, I'm going to kill him."

Ranma followed the Chinese boy's gaze. He leaned back against the tree, apparently lost in thought, and tugged at his pigtail distractedly.

"Uh, Tarou," the pigtailed boy said eventually. "Ryouga's gonna come with me to the village. Did you wanna come too?"

"To the village?" Tarou repeated. Ranma was being unbelievably cocky – or stupid – if he planned on taking the fanged boy with him. "What's the matter?" he smirked. "Can't bear to be parted from him again?"

"Course not, idiot!" Ranma cuffed the Chinese boy lightly over the head. "He wanted to come. I couldn't really say no, could I?" There was a pause. "So, are you comin'? You could keep him outta the way while I talk to 'kane."

Tarou raised an eyebrow. "You insult me, and then you ask me for a favour?"

Ranma shrugged. The gesture seemed forced. "Fine. Stay here then."

Without saying another word, the pigtailed boy climbed to his feet and marched off to fetch Ryouga.

Tarou leaned back against the tree trunk and chewed thoughtfully on a fingernail. He had been beaten; quite badly if the ache in his body was any indication. Ryouga had gotten lucky, it was true, but there was _no way_ he would have been beaten if he still had his monster body. Or if he wasn't forced to wear the stupid pantyhose around his waist…

What was he hanging around for? The vain hope that Mr Directionally Useless would actually remember the location of that spring? Some misguided notion of friendship? Companionship? Bah! If he wanted his body back, he was going to have to do it himself. And once he did, the first thing he was going to do was pound that brainless, directionless, perverted, curse-stealing ex-pig-boy into the ground!

Tarou watched as Ranma and Ryouga walked off. He waited until they were out of sight, and then went back to the tent to retrieve his belongings.

---

Ranma stood with his back to the late afternoon sun, grimly surveying the telephone booth as though it were a mortal enemy. It was best to get this over and done with. With any luck, Akane wouldn't know anything about the trip or their curses, and then he could get back to trying to fix this stupid curse business.

He glanced down the street toward Ryouga. Sending the lost boy to the convenience store probably wasn't the best idea, but since Tarou had been too busy sulking about being beaten to come along and help, there weren't many other options. Satisfied that the lost boy was out of earshot – and, more importantly, not lost – Ranma picked up the handset, slipped in a ten yen coin, and dialled the number for the Tendou Dojo. The phone rang once, twice, three times.

"Hello, Ranma," a familiar voice said.

Ranma breathed a sigh of relief. "Hey, 'kane," he said.

The phone rang again.

Oh, crap.

Ranma pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. It was still ringing. That meant Akane hadn't answered the phone. That meant…

He hung up the phone, and turned around slowly, a sheepish grin already forming on his lips. She was standing there, not two metres from him, the afternoon sun rimming her hair with a golden fire – or was it a battle aura?

"Hey, Akane!" He gave a nonchalant little wave, and then snatched his hand out of the air when he realised just how stupid that would look.

She gave him a small smile, and shrugged the huge backpack off her shoulders and sat it on the ground beside her. One of the straps had come undone; quickly, she refastened it. Ranma tried not to pay attention to how her impossibly tiny shorts rode up as she bent over.

He allowed himself to relax a little. She didn't seem angry. If anything, she seemed more pensive.

"Couldn't wait to see me again, huh?" Ranma said, grinning.

"What's going on, Ranma?" she said flatly.

Ranma folded his arms and considered his options. General denial seemed like a good one. "Nothin'. Just a training trip."

Akane shook her head, clearly not believing him. "Who was that girl you were hugging on television?"

"Hugging?!" Ranma exclaimed indignantly. Did she think he was some kind of pervert, or something? "I never hugged nobody!"

"Kunou saw you!"

"And you believe Kunou over me?!" Ranma gave a derisive chuckle. "The guy was too stupid to figure out about the pigtailed girl."

She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. "So you're saying I'm stupid, now?"

"What? No, I never said that!"

"Well, what _are_ you saying?"

"I ain't saying nothin'," Ranma snapped.

"What's going on, Ranma? I _know_ that this isn't just a training trip. Why were you chasing Pantyhose Tarou? Why did the newsreader call him Ryouga?"

Ranma felt the blood run from his face. She had all the pieces. It was only a matter of time before she put them together.

"Because it _was_ Ryouga! Ryouga has Tarou's curse."

"And the girl in the scaled shirt?" Akane demanded. "The one you were hugging?"

Ranma rolled his eyes. "Jeez, Akane, I never hugged him! That was Tarou. _He_ was the girl!"

"I know he's a bit pretty but-"

"No, I mean he has the girl curse now."

"Does that mean…?" She stared at him, her eyes widening.

Ranma closed his eyes, waiting for the bombshell to fall. There was only one piece of the puzzle left. There was no way she couldn't have figured it out by now!

"Does that mean you're cured?"

Ranma let out a breath he didn't even know he'd been holding.

"Oh Ranma!" she cried, before he had time say anything. She leapt towards him and wrapped her arms around his neck. "I'm so happy for you!"

Ranma supposed that he should have been feeling relieved, but he didn't. He felt like the lowest of the low, the biggest jerk in the world, like something you'd scrape out from P-Chan's hooves. Sweet, innocent, trusting, wonderfully blind Akane…

Akane pulled back, and the smile slipped from her face. "But what about poor Ryouga? We can't leave him with that curse!"

Ranma spotted movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to investigate. Ryouga had chosen just that moment to return from the shop.

The fanged boy spotted Akane and froze, his mouth gaping wide. Whatever it was he'd been holding in his hands slipped and smashed onto the ground. Akane jogged towards him, smiling reassuringly.

"It's okay, Ryouga," she soothed. "Ranma told me everything."

Ryouga backed up a couple of steps, his hands raised defensively. "H-he did?" he queried, shooting an accusatory glare towards Ranma. "And you don't mind?"

"We're friends, aren't we? I don't care about your curse."

Oh gods, no! Ranma thought frantically. Don't tell him that, Akane!

"You don't?" Ryouga blinked disbelievingly, and his hands dropped ever so slightly. "You're not angry about P-Chan?"

Akane stopped dead in her tracks. "P-Chan? But what's he got to do with…?" Very slowly, she turned back around to face Ranma, her expression hard and unyielding. "Ranma, what did you do to my P-Chan? He was around just before you left and then…" She blinked, confused. "But he said… No!" She shook her head violently and then ran back up the street to her backpack.

Ranma watched her, heart racing, praying that whatever bit of Akane's brain it was that kept her from seeing the truth about the piglet normally, came back from wherever it had gone. Maybe she was leaving.

"Or maybe she's just getting her cooking stuff so she can turn you into sweet and sour pork," a little voice piped up from within.

Akane spent a moment rummaging around in her backpack, and then stood up. Ranma's heart sank when he saw what she was holding in her hand. She unscrewed the lid from the water bottle and waved it at him threateningly.

"What's that for?"

"I want to splash you."

"I don't think you wanna do that," he warned.

"Why not?" She advanced toward him menacingly. "You haven't been cured, have you?"

"Ack!" he squawked, dodging a splash of water.

"You were lying to me, weren't you?"

"Well, technically, no… aaah!" He nimbly avoided another stream of water. "No, wait! I can explain!"

Ranma waited for his brain to come up with something – anything – that would get him out of this, but nothing came. He turned and looked over at Ryouga… poor Ryouga… who stood like a statue, not even breathing, and an expression of grim resignation on his face. It was over, and they both knew it.

"I ain't cured," Ranma mumbled. "I got Ryouga's curse. His old one."

"Ryouga's curse…?" she repeated hesitantly, as if she didn't really want to know the answer. "What do you turn into?"

"Piglet."

The word hit her like a kick to the stomach. Akane staggered back, gasping for breath, expressions of shock, horror, pain and disgust all warring for dominance on her face. She let out a roar of rage, and slapped him across the face. It hurt far worse than any blow he had received in battle.

"Why didn't you tell me?!" she screamed, her face so crimson it was nearly purple. "All those months and you never told me! Why?!"

She then gave a howl of fury and turned her attention to Ryouga. Ranma waited for the onslaught, but it never came. He glanced over his shoulder to see why. Ryouga had vanished.

---

The tiny figure bounded through the trees at a speed that even Ranma had no hope of matching. Several hours nestled in sweet Akane's panties had topped up his flagging energy reserves, and he was on a mission. Somewhere, there was a girl out here, one who desperately wanted him to change her name, and he was going to find her.

He had even managed to scrounge up a picture of her. He had to admit the boy made an exquisite girl. Not quite his type – he preferred long hair – but so firm and round in all the right places, and so virgin and untouched. He couldn't wait!

Happousai alighted on a tree branch to catch his breath. He whipped out one of Akane's bras from his gi, and twirled it around his finger thoughtfully. Pantyhose Tarou had better appreciate his present; he'd stolen it just for her. Ranma – the little ingrate – had never appreciated his presents, but something told Happousai that the girl would love this one. It was so pretty and the lace so delicate. No doubt she'd be so thrilled with it that she'd offer to give him a little fashion show. She might even allow him to nuzzle up close, and then he'd be able to smell the sweet fabric against the soft musk of her skin, and feel the lace against his cheek.

Happousai pressed his face into the bra and breathed in its delicate scent, and then tucked it securely back into his gi. He felt around for the sizeable concentrations of ki which signalled the presence of a powerful martial artist. He still couldn't sense anything, but it didn't matter. No, he'd find her soon enough.

* * *

Revision History: None yet 

Author's Notes: I now have a prereader! Many thanks go to claymade, who gave me a lot of very helpful feedback for an earlier version of his chapter. Go read his fics - they're good! Also, although they will probably never see this, I would also like to thank Exar and Abdiel from the FFML, who have both given me very helpful C&C for previous chapters of this story.


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